Argumentation and Reasoning in Design: An Empirical Analysis of the Effects of Verbal Reasoning on Idea Value in Group Idea Generation

Reasoning is argumentative and is at the core of design activity and thinking. Understanding the influence of reasoning on the value of ideas is key to support design practice. The paper aims to show the effect of verbal reasoning on the value of ideas. Protocol analyses of four industry cases doing idea generation shows that framing by certainty and deductive reasoning lead to useful incremental ideas while framing by uncertainty and abductive reasoning lead to radical ideas.

The paper concludes that the way of framing ideas is indicative of how ideas add value to on-going design processes.