What Does It Mean to Use a Method? The Roles of Methods for Experts and Novices Dealing With Uncertainty: a Qualitative Analysis

Design is inherently uncertain. Therefore – aiming to support the designer - it is important to know how expert and novice designers deal with uncertainty. Historically, design methods have been proposed as a way for designers to solve complex and complicated problems systematically, thus reducing uncertainty. But do designers use methods like this? In this paper, we describe a study, which aimed to investigate how designers experience uncertainty in a design planning activity under time pressure. We assessed the design behavior of experts (more than 10 years of experience in practice) and advanced beginners (between 1 and 3 years of experience in practice). The results suggest that designers – novices and experts - articulate different purposes for the use of methods that go beyond the use of method as systematic instructions.