Design expertise: how knowledge, experience, and skills set expert architects apart from novices

The analysis of the design process under the cognitive theory proposes an understanding of internal mental processes, based on the processing of information derived from the knowledge, experience, and skills of the architect. Although it is difficult to trace the sources of the architects’ thoughts, the drawings they produce facilitate the identification of the successive approaches used during the design process. Since cognition, or the act of thinking, itself cannot be observed, we can only analyze the results of the thought that guided cognitive actions. The steps of the research conducted by the authors of this article were as follows: 1) three experienced architects and three novices were filmed individually, for 60 minutes, while they carried out a project; 2) these professionals were interviewed for 30 minutes after the end of the project; 3) physical, perceptual, functional, and conceptual cognitive actions were identified by segmenting and codifying the actions performed during the filming; 4) these data were translated into graphs; 5) the differences between novices and experts were identified from the response time in each of the four levels of cognitive actions; and 6) the qualitative analysis of actions and effectiveness were assessed. Experienced architects quickly recovered from their memory-specific knowledge and, based on scant evidence, select, combine, and generate different ideas during the design process. They can do so because the knowledge encoded in typical situations enables them to make faster and better supported decisions. Expertise is the human faculty that allows performance of cognitive operations that involve daily thinking and doing with quality, speed, and vitality. An expert is someone who performs a task significantly better than most other people do. We concluded that expert architects perform projects with greater ease than beginners, not only because they have more knowledge and experience, but also because they use cognitive actions more effectively. This paper contributes to the discussion on the design practice and the factors that contribute to the expertise development in architecture.