Personality assessment in regard to design strategies

This paper discusses some preliminary results of several knowledge-acquisition and documentation-structuring techniques that were used to assess the working styles of architects. The focus of this assessment was on their strategic design behaviour. Hettema's Interactive Personality Model (Hettema 1979, 1989) was used to explain and interpret these results. The methods used to acquire the necessary data are protocol analysis, card sorting and interviews. The results suggest that at least three parameters can be used to explain and differentiate the strategic design behaviour of architects. These parameters are S (site-oriented), B (brief-oriented) and C (concept-oriented). A priority hierarchy of these parameters reveals six major distinguishable working styles. These results are captured in a new design model that can be used in data bank implementations