New tools from neuroscience allow design researchers to explore design neurocognition. By taking the advantage of EEG's temporal resolution we give up spatial resolution to focus on the performance of time-related design tasks. This paper presents results from an experiment using EEG to measure brain activation to study mechanical engineers and architects to compare their design neurocognition. In this study, we adopted and extended the tasks described in a previous fMRI study of design neurocognition reported in the literature. The block experiment consists of a sequence of 3 tasks: problem solving, basic design and open design using a physical interface. The block is preceded by a familiarizing pre-task using the physical interface and then extended to a fourth task using free-hand sketching. Brainwaves were collected from both mechanical engineers and architects. Results comparing 36 mechanical engineers and architects while designing were produced. These results indicate design cognition differences between the two domains in task-related power between the problem-solving task and the design tasks, in temporal resolution and transformed power.

Technologies are created through the collective efforts of individual inventors. Understanding inventors’ behaviors may thus enable predicting invention, guiding design efforts or improving technology policy. We examined data from 2.8 million inventors’ 3.9 million patents and found that most patents are created by ‘explorers’: inventors who move between different technology domains during their careers. We mapped the space of latent relatedness between technology domains and found explorers were 250 times more likely to enter technology domains that were highly related to the domains of their previous patents, compared to an unrelated domain. The great regularity of inventors’ behavior enabled accurate prediction of individual inventors’ future movements: a model trained on just 5 years of data predicted inventors’ explorations 30 years later with a log-loss below 0.01. Inventors entering their most related domains were associated with patenting up to 40% more in the new domain, but with reduced citations per patent. These findings may be instructive for inventors exploring design directions, and useful for organizations or governments in forecasting or directing technological change.

To complement studies on design sketching within particular phases of design processes in specific design domains, this paper analyzes descriptions of design processes given by designers from a wide variety of fields. This research forms part of a wider project on comparisons across design domains and draws attention to the many types and properties of sketches in different contexts. Further, it focuses on the multiple roles that sketching can take in idea generation, as well as in reasoning and communicating design ideas. In particular this paper examines how the different types and roles of sketches can be more or less formal and how this can lead to misunderstandings.