Nigel Cross

Nigel Cross is a British academic, a design researcher and educator, Emeritus Professor of Design Studies at The Open University, United Kingdom,[1] and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Design Studies. He is one of the key people of the Design Research Society.

Research

Nigel Cross began his design research in the 1960s with studies of "simulated" computer-aided design systems where the purported simulator was actually a human operator, using text and graphical communication via CCTV. Cross later referred to this as a kind of Reverse Turing test;[2] in interaction design this kind of study later became known as a Wizard of Oz experiment. He also applied early forms of protocol analysis to these experiments. His PhD on ‘Human and Machine Roles in Computer Aided Design’ was expanded into the book The Automated Architect (1977),[3] which was critical of some of the computer-aided architectural design work of that time. In 1971, Cross co-organised the first major conference of the Design Research Society (DRS), on Design Participation. He continued to play significant roles in DRS, and since 2006 has been its President.

Early interests in design methods led to an edited book of foundational papers, Developments in Design Methodology (1984)[4] and a textbook of Engineering Design Methods (1989, now in a 4th edition).[5]

Subsequently his research interests turned more to design cognition or design thinking. In 1991 Cross established, with colleagues at Delft University of Technology, the international series of Design Thinking Research Symposia (DTRS).

Writings

In 1982 Cross published a seminal journal article 'Designerly Ways of Knowing',[6] drawing on design research to show Design as having its own intellectual and practical culture as a basis for education, and contrasting it with cultures of Science and Arts and Humanities. This is based on the idea that "There are things to know, ways of knowing them and ways of finding out about them that are specific to the design area." A series of his articles and conference papers on this theme over the period 1982 – 2000 was published under the title Designerly Ways of Knowing (2006).[7]

The second DTRS meeting at Delft (1994) laid the foundations for much subsequent work on protocol studies of design activity.[8] "Understanding how designers think and work" has been a significant theme in his writings, culminating in the book Design Thinking (2011).[9]

References

  1. ↑ [See personal university website at: http://www9.open.ac.uk/mct/people/nigel.cross]
  2. ↑ Cross, N (2001) "Can a Machine Design?", Design Issues, Vol. 17, No.41, pp. 44-50.
  3. ↑ Nigel Cross (1977). The Automated Architect. Pion Limited. ISBN 0850860571.
  4. ↑ Nigel Cross (1984). Developments in Design Methodology. Wiley. ISBN 0471102482.
  5. ↑ Nigel Cross (2008). Engineering Design Methods. Wiley. ISBN 978 0470519264.
  6. ↑ Cross, N (1982) "Designerly Ways of Knowing", Design Studies, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp. 221-227.
  7. ↑ Nigel Cross (2007). Designerly Ways of Knowing. Birkhauser. ISBN 978 3764384845.
  8. ↑ Nigel Cross, Henry Christiaans and Kees Dorst (eds.) (1996). Analysing Design Activity. Wiley. ISBN 978 0471960607.
  9. ↑ Nigel Cross (2011). Design Thinking: Understanding how designers think and work. Berg/Bloomsbury. ISBN 978 1847886361.

External links

See personal university website at: http://www9.open.ac.uk/mct/people/nigel.cross

An interview with Cross talking about design thinking and design research is in Ambidextrous magazine, 2008: http://www.ambidextrousmag.org/issues/09/cross.html

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