There is limited information about the design process and outcomes of novice industrial designers when working with different levels of problem abstraction. In this paper, we propose a new way of describing the cognitive processes of problem solving based on problem decomposition strategy studies and network-based cognitive maps. An empirical study was conducted to examine the impact of problem abstraction on novice designers, and their reasoning mode was quantitatively explored. Thirty-three novice designers majoring in industrial design participated in a 40-min design exercise and verbalized their cognitive process while they were solving a given design problem. The verbal protocols from the experiment were first segmented, then encoded based on cognitive maps. By analyzing the problem-solving process using this new method, we found that designers use different reasoning modes for different levels of problem abstraction. Abstract problems helped designers to break design fixation and promote the divergence of ideas. Ideas also improved in fluency, originality and novelty so that the abstract group generated better solutions. The study contributes to an enhanced understanding of design activity.

当使用不同级别的问题抽象时，有关新手工业设计师的设计过程和结果的信息有限。在本文中，我们提出了一种基于问题分解策略研究和基于网络的认知图来描述问题解决的认知过程的新方法。进行了一项经验研究，以研究问题抽象对新手设计师的影响，并对他们的推理模式进行了定量研究。工业设计专业的33名新手设计师参加了40分钟的设计练习，并在解决给定的设计问题时用语言表达了他们的认知过程。首先将实验中的口头协议进行细分，然后根据认知图进行编码。通过使用这种新方法分析解决问题的过程，我们发现设计人员针对不同级别的问题抽象使用不同的推理模式。抽象问题帮助设计师打破了对设计的束缚，并促进了想法的分歧。在流利度，独创性和新颖性方面的想法也得到了改善，因此抽象派提出了更好的解决方案。该研究有助于加深对设计活动的理解。