Morphological analysis of design sessions

There is no consensus within the design research community on how to analyse design meetings. In contrast to models which conceive designing as a strict goal-directed process, we think at an interpretative approach suggesting a methodical reorientation. We were interested in exploring whether previously neglected design methods can be adopted for use as analytic tools for design meetings. Specific tools for this purpose are morphological charts and morphological overviews. Based on the definition of design by the C-K theory, we have used morphological overviews to reconstruct the emergence of design concepts in architectural meetings. This was done by analyzing video recordings of these meetings. Our results show that morphological charts are useful for the analysis of design meetings as they were being capable of presenting the development of design concepts. Morphological charts proved to be effective in reducing the time needed to analyze a rich set of data. We believe this complexity reduction offers the possibility of doing research on more (complex) design meetings more effectively, which is beneficial for generalization of findings.