Examining the distribution of framing in design communication

Abstract

Previous studies have employed statistical methods to identify correlations and significant differences in design activities among different design environments by means of protocal analysis. In our recent papers using the same methods, we identified the occurrences of frames in different design collaboration settings and calculated the proportion of frames occurring. The results have confirmed that problem framing in design activities is not at a disadvantage in digital settings. In this paper, a graphical technique, linkograph, is used to investigate the distribution of different types of frames among different design settings based on the structure of framing activities.