Using Linkography to investigate students’ thinking and information use during a STEM task

One of the characteristics of the twenty-first century is the increase in the information sources available to designers to make their design decisions. However, current verbal protocol analysis methods and theoretical frameworks do not explain how internal and external information sources contribute to novice designers’ moment-to-moment thought processes. The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of Linkography, a protocol analysis method, to investigate the nature of novice designers’ thought processes. We also introduce the use of coloured archiographs, as a complimentary tool, to analyse how novice designers use information sources during the early phases of the design process. In order to discuss and illustrate the use of these analysis methods, we report on a case study in which a group of Grade 8 participants completed a design task requiring them to design a heat retaining food container for street food vendors at a taxi depot. The findings of this study suggests that Linkography, in combination with coloured archiographs, is a novel method in technology education to analyse and visually represent how students think while they are designing.