Digital Media and Design Didactics in Visual Cognition

The cognitive properties of design learning have rarely been the subject of design education. Irrespective of the specific design domain, traditional educational models in design education are based upon the evaluation of the product of designing rather than on what might be considered a learning increment. Lately we have developed the concept of cognitive learning tasks as learning increments in design education and propose that digital media constitute the basis of uniquely powerful learning technologies. The research described in this paper addresses the confluence of cognitive learning tasks as a pedagogical approach in design education, its potential relationship to digital media in order to develop a digital design didactics, and the relationship of these developments in design education to current practices of digital design generation. In this paper, we focus on the cognitive aspects of visual cognition in design learning. An example in the domain of architectural design is illustrated