Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

This paper presents results from an experiment to determine brain activation differences between problem-solving anddesigning of industrial designers. The study adopted and extended the tasks described in a previous fMRI study of designcognition and measured brain activation using EEG. The experiment consists of 4 tasks: problem-solving, basic designand open design tasks using a tangible interface and sketching. By taking advantage of EEG’s temporal resolution wefocus on time-related neural responses during problem-solving compared to design tasks. Statistical analyses indicateincreased activation when designing compared to problem-solving. Results of time-related neural responses connected toBrodmann areas cognitive functions, contribute to a better understanding of industrial designers’ cognition. The study ispart of a research project whose goal is to correlate design cognition with brain behavior across design domains. Bring-ing neuroscience methods to design research is contributing to a better understanding of the emergent field of designneurocognition.