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Previous studies in general human cognition indicate that the
use of differentsearching strategies to solve well-structured
scientific problem have much to dowith experiences. Expert
scientists tend to use working-forward strategies tosolve
problems, while novices tend to use working-backward ones. As
far as the studies in design cognition, although design problems
are mostly ill-structured, it was found that designers often
decompose a single ill-structured design problem into several
well-structured sub-problems. In view of this, we can say that
well-structured problems exist in both scientific and design
problems. However, there it seems that, so far, has been no
studies focusing on the designer''s searching strategies in
dealing with well-structured design sub-problems. The objective
of this study is thus to explore different searching strategies
employed by expert and novice designers to solve well-structured
industrial design sub-problems. The research method adopted is
protocol analysis. The results suggest that, probably because of
the differences in the nature of the structures between
scientific and design problems, different from the scientists,
both expert and novice designers tend to employ working-backward
strategy while dealing with design sub-problems. Based on these
results, a cognitive model of searching strategy in industrial
design thinking is proposed at the end of this paper.
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