2.1 The role of cognitive architecture in enhancing design processes

The apparent ease with which experienced designers navigate the design process stems from their cognitive architecture. Researchers have shown that two kinds of memory work together in this architecture working memory and long-term memory (^{Ho & Siu, 2012}). Working memory processes, the input and links new knowledge with the long-term stored knowledge, creating interconnected webs of knowledge known as schema. Through significant and connected schemata, experienced designers can function effectively, automatically, and in an organised manner by breaking down vast amounts of knowledge into limited working memory chunks. This is especially true for designing highly complex domains such as the elderly or physically handicapped people.

Effective cognitive thinking is critical in determining how efficiently learners studying complicated domains can learn. Studies have indicated that novice design students often rely on trial-and-error approaches, which quickly exhaust working memory and provide little room for developing new schema connections because they lack organised schemata (Smith et al., 2019). Three types of cognitive processing were: intrinsic processing, relevant processing, and tangential processing. Designing for the elderly is a challenge that calls for deep consideration of the task's inherent complexity, or ‘intrinsic thinking.’ And the brain's ability to form new schema connections depends on meaningful thinking. Research has shown that intrinsic reasoning is enhanced when emotional intelligence is integrated into learning processes (Jones & Brown, 2021). The term ‘extraneous thinking’ is used to describe mental processes that are not necessary for the completion of a task, such as daydreaming or ruminating. In complex design studies, elevated cognitive demands might consume working memory and hinder learning.

2.2 Cognitive thinking and emotions

In the context of intrinsic reasoning, the addition of affective abilities increases task complexity. Junior design students in design programs should apply empathy to get the user's perspective on the environment or product they are creating. With this newfound understanding, they can settle on the best course of action for the design (^{Walther et al., 2017}). Developing empathy is a skill that can be taught to beginning designers; doing so is essential for creating products that people actually want to use). Engaging in such a pursuit necessitates a level of complexity in learning and design that goes beyond what is strictly necessary. Therefore, it is vital not only to maximise cognitive learning potential but also to acquire the abilities needed to make suitable design judgments. Several studies have theorised a robust link between emotional experiences and cognitive assessments of those experiences (Davis et al., 2020). However, the precise function of individual feelings in the academic process is still up for discussion. For instance, studies have shown that students' capacity to manage abstract thought and problem-solving technique selection can be impacted by their emotional state, which can be both good and bad (^{Xue et al., 2020}). An individual feels a variety of emotions, including fear, amusement, rage, pleasure, regret, and desire (^{Desmet, 2018}). Instead of a single feeling, the mixture of different emotions leads to an enjoyable experience. Research has indicated that unpleasant emotions like perplexity might actually foster deeper engagement with learning materials (^{D’Mello et al., 2014}). These aspects are usually regarded as belonging to the psychological discipline instead of design disciplines. Few design researchers engage in developing these fields and applying them as cross-disciplinary studies involving design and emotion. Emotional reaction and inclusive human concerns are of paramount importance in design. While individuals become increasingly sensitive to dimensions of things that transcend conventional characteristics of usefulness, the need to comprehend and establish emotional and aesthetic connections between people and products grows. Similarly, the idea of experiencing, where the subject and object meet and integrate, is a crucial factor in the development of emotionally significant goods. This is because experience is a place where all faculties, particularly emotions, are aroused. This corresponds to the theory of attachment between people and objects, in which, at the height of love, the border between the personality, as well as the object, threatens to dissolve. More study is needed to determine how emotions affect junior-level design students' capacity for effective emotional response and how certain components of learning interventions promote such responses (^{Jokinen & Silvennoinen, 2020}).

Some design scholars’ writings on design studies rely even more strongly on psychological concepts (^{Markussen, 2017}). In subsequent research, enhanced concepts on how designers might implement the dominant assessment theory from the psychology of emotion are investigated. By analysing the distinctive evaluation components in people's accounts of emotional experiences with items, scholars attempt to develop design-specific assessment structures (i.e. appraisal theory) for emotions such as pleasure, happiness, and disappointment. Markussen (2017) utilises the same evaluation theory and ‘blends’ it with embodied cognition, a major theory in cognitive science, to explain why patients, have such a broad variety of views about utilising interactive healthcare systems. Markussen’s theoretically-informed research of the interaction with a blood-drawing robot gives insight into how consumers produce new evaluations of objects (via the blending of conceptual structures) that evoke fresh or different emotional responses than the individual assessments.

2.3 Enhancing design processes through a human-centred approach

Designers who show the capability to perceive user experience demonstrate a fundamental emotive talent that is crucial for understanding the individuals who interact with their designs (^{Esser, 2018}). This ability, described as 'empathy,' involves the capacity to feel ‘as if one is the user’ by taking on their perspective to relate to situations. The authors emphasised that this ability is derived from an understanding of user experience and design practices. Therefore, proficient designers employ their capacity to comprehend user experience to discern and incorporate the perspectives, feelings, and anticipations of others into efficacious design solutions.

Empathy and user experience are fundamental elements of human-centred design that significantly impact functional design outcomes (Hassenzahl & Tractinsky, 2020). The Council for Interior Design Qualification, whose scope of practice definition guides environmental designers' proficiency on a national level, has noted that the profession relies on human behaviour and theories addressing well-being. Their research revealed that designers' primary responsibility is the emotional needs of people (^{Professional Standards - CIDA, 2018}). Therefore, it is imperative to incorporate training programmes for undergraduate design students that enable empathetic skill development, given that this ability is necessary for designers to achieve their design goals.

The influence of emotions on learners' engagement with relevant learning material is significant. In light of this, it is essential to explore the methods of integrating emotive abilities, particularly empathy, into the undergraduate design curriculum. Furthermore, the field of design education, which prioritises human-centred design, provides an ideal setting for the examination of the impact of instructional methods on the development of sympathetic abilities.

3.1 Emotion-related experience in the design process

The emotions of anger, sadness, disgust, joy, and so on have been discovered to influence junior design students’ thinking. In design practices, sadness or anger is felt when the proposed design project is rejected, and joy and pride are felt when the proposed design project is praised. Sometimes, emotions are evoked outside the design process, such as excitement aroused by good grades and fear and stress caused by studying. However, junior design students are seldom able to notice emotional changes during their design process. They also lack experience in managing their emotions and going through the design process without hindrance. Junior design students may have the possibility to be unable to control their emotional changes. When they are nervous, they may be unable to use their inner strength. When they suppress their anger, they may be carried away by their sense of dignity and make wrong judgments.

The emotion of fear is an unnoticed emotion among designers although psychological studies have argued that fear functions in the human brain (^{Guerra & Tripp, 2018}). Some scholars proposed that designers should be able to avoid failure in reaching the design goals through knowledge and theory and should not have to rely on fear information in thinking, those evoking negative emotions. As long as they learn to deal with potential threats to design material, designers will pay more attention to making decisions and successfully avoid potential dangers. Designers can understand more abstract and potential threats, such as radiation’s harmful effects on the physical body. The experience of fear is conducive to creating a sense of stress. When designers reflect on themselves, they can immediately prevent threats from occurring and return to their original state. Some effective methods of doing so are to calmly observe the changes in the body, such as the increase in the heartbeat.

The emotion of calmness is not presented and noticed because a calm state is the most ‘normal’ state for designers. When designers are in a long-standing space and doing a regular job, they are basically in their comfort zone and feeling calm. When the brain is calm, it secretes dopamine and serotonin normally. The prefrontal lobe also works actively, so designers can think logically and make correct judgments. When faced with problems, designers put aside subjective feelings and other troubles, let their frontal lobes work hard, and think objectively about the impact of these problems. Designers view comprehensive contexts with calm emotion, including whether they are more concerned about the relationship between designers and customers in the long run. If designers keep training themselves like this, they can develop the ability to respond to their emotional changes without losing their logical thinking ability.

3.2 Typical emotions in the design process

However, many junior design students do not fully notice that the eight primary emotions are categorised based on users’ feedback regarding their design consumption. This means these emotions are elicited by the external environment but may not be active in further cognitive thinking. This is a gap in previous design and emotion studies. In the design process, designers’ emotions are a response to their external environment and influence their decision-making. Emotional changes from users’ viewpoints might not work the same way. Users’ emotions result in their response to their external environment. According to the qualitative research findings in design & emotion studies (^{Mahan, 2021}) and appraisal theory (^{Jokinen & Silvennoinen, 2020}), users' emotions can influence the design process. Therefore, investigating potentially workable emotions in the design process is necessary. By reviewing the appraisal theory, the research team learned some basic emotions. Then, the theoretical descriptions of basic emotions were examined during the review of design studies and practices, and different types of typical emotions were identified in the design process (Tab. 1). Hence, some typical emotions were reconsidered and incorporated into a new model to illustrate the relationships between emotions and typical emotions in the design process (Fig. 1).

3.3 A Model illustration of the relationships between emotions and typical emotions in the design process

The incorporation of emotion is a significant factor in the design process (^{Ho & Siu, 2012}). It is critical to teach junior design students how emotion may influence the decision-making process and even the ultimate design output. To demonstrate how some typical emotions are classified in the design process, a new concept model (Fig. 1) is built. Not every emotion would be observed in the design process. Some typical emotions are those that are relatively obviously engaged with the cognitive thinking process and decision-making in the design process. Information processing and decision-making mostly influence these typical emotions. They create motivation and influence further actions and judgments rather than only working as a kind of mood or feeling. These typical emotions can be categorised into five main types in Fig. 1: external positive, internal positive, neutral, external negative, and internal negative. This concept can be illustrated with the Fig. 1 model: During the design process, some external dominations, such as material allocation, emphasise stimulation from external sources rather than personal ones (i.e. designers’ consideration). The internal dominations, such as designers’ personal preferences, emphasise personal consideration rather than stimulation from the external environment. Neutral emotions are responses to relatively balanced interactions in both external stimulations and personal consideration. Positive emotions refer to a range of desirable reactions in response to various situations, characterised by pleasant feelings of curiosity, satisfaction, love and pleasure, among others. It is important to note that positive emotions are distinct from pleasurable physical sensations and general positive effects. Negative emotions are any feelings that make designers feel unpleasant and sad. These feelings cause designers to loathe themselves and others, destroy designers’ confidence and self-esteem, and diminish their overall sense of well-being. As the model in Fig. 1 illustrates, typical emotions in the design process can change or shift according to the experience of, investigated information about, and observation of a designer regarding themselves and users. For example, excitement as a part of external positive emotions would be digested and shifted to curiosity as a part of internal positive emotions. This would arouse in designers a deep desire to learn about the unknown and the nature of things. Additionally, anxiety as part of internal negative emotions would be digested and shifted to peacefulness, a mental state of tranquillity that is a part of neutral emotions. When designers’ minds are cluttered with worry and task lists, it can be beneficial to replace them with more peaceful thoughts. The change can enhance or weaken design outcomes. Both emotions and cognitive thinking are significant in the design process. Balanced responses to critical issues result in balanced design choices and processes. The investigation of design processes is informed in part by designers’ experiences with techniques that facilitate cognitive thinking and emotional management in design processes. A balanced approach that incorporates both reason and emotion is the foundation of the proposed model. The possibility of including both emotions and thinking in the design process is investigated. The model contains 40 typical emotions that are a part of the design process. It explains the ideas of emotion, thinking, and emotional management as well as examines their relationships. It is an excellent beginning point for further developing our knowledge of how designers’ emotions manifest, fluctuate and interact with one another. It will influence subsequent design and emotion research in this field and be the starting point for designers’ investigation of emotions.

Fig. 1 Forty emotion categories. 

4.1 Research questions and research procedures

Presently, the scope of design education for novice designers is limited to facilitating the application of theoretical knowledge acquired from lecture-based courses on human-centred subjects such as empathic design and user experience, to address issues presented in design studio projects. Regrettably, novice design students frequently have a sense of being overwhelmed while engaging in problem-solving activities. They encounter difficulties in discerning significant attributes of emotional fluctuations and exhibit a deficiency in their capacity to generate effective solutions to problems, although they possess the necessary information. This challenge has been a source of frustration for designers, and researchers across various design fields for decades, highlighting the difficulty of effective and dependable approaches to tutoring novice designers in dealing with aspects affecting the design process that are emotion-related (^{Shadle et al., 2017}). Accordingly, determining effective ways to educate junior design students on the mutable emotional needs of users and audiences is of utmost significance.

Emotional experiences have significant roles in the design process. However, exploring these experiences can be a challenge for rookie design students. Hence, to develop necessary strategies for educating junior design students on managing their emotions during the design process, the research question, ‘What categories of emotions do junior design students discern when engaging in the manipulation of their design process?’ was posed.

To generate potential research directions to address the research questions identified earlier, this study employed a qualitative research methodology utilising focus group discussions to gather in-depth insights into the emotional experiences of junior design students during the design process. Three focus groups were conducted, each with six to eight participants, to accommodate a total of 20 junior design students from a variety of design disciplines, such as interior design, product design, and graphic design. Participants were selected based on specific criteria: they must be enrolled in a design program at a recognised university and have completed at least one year of design coursework to ensure they possess foundational knowledge and experience in the field.

Demographic data collected included age, gender, year of study, and specific design discipline. This information was crucial for understanding the diversity of emotional experiences across different backgrounds within the design field. The focus groups were facilitated by trained moderators who guided discussions using open-ended questions designed to elicit participants' feelings and thoughts about their emotional shifts throughout various stages of the design process.

Each session was audio-recorded with the participant's consent for subsequent transcription and analysis, and it lasted approximately 90 minutes. To ensure a comfortable environment, focus groups were held in familiar settings such as university classrooms or lounges, where students felt free to express their thoughts openly. The discussions focused on identifying specific emotions experienced during key phases of the design process, including ideation, prototyping, and feedback reception.

To find recurring themes and patterns pertaining to emotional experiences, thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. The findings from these focus groups informed the identification of forty common emotions encountered by junior designers, providing a robust basis for developing a novel model that visually represents these emotions. This approach not only enhances the credibility of the research but also ensures that the voices of junior designers are accurately captured and represented in the study's outcomes. These modifications enhance transparency and credibility by providing detailed information about participant demographics and selection criteria within the focus group methodology.

4.2 Research Participants

The present empirical study invited second-year undergraduate students studying design in Hong Kong to participate. The participants were unfamiliar with the concept of emotions in the design process, and this fact positively contributed to strengthening the generalisation of the research results. The participants in this study developed a foundational grasp of design principles after engaging in a two-year programme that covered many aspects of design, such as design thinking, user experience, and design outcomes. Additionally, they gained a rudimentary comprehension of the design process within a very brief timeframe. Nevertheless, their attitudes towards design and established methodologies for controlling the design process have not yet fully evolved. Although participants were not conversant with the concept of 'design and emotion,' their incremental application of these concepts to the design process was anticipated, and reflections on their design manipulation would amply reflect the emotional transformation that had occurred. The study included 30 participants who were natives of Hong Kong and spoke Cantonese as their mother tongue. They received an English-medium university education and were fluent in English, as well as being able to acquaint themselves well with Western concepts.

5.1 Types of emotions identified in the design process of junior design students

After obtaining experience in the design projects in Phase 1 and Phase 2, the participants were invited to share this experience in the focus group. Feedback on the participants’ design projects was collected through their discussion. The data were gathered and presented in a transcript. The required workload in Phase 1 and Phase 2 design projects was similar. Based on the feedback from participants, 40 emotions, including loneliness, disgust, shame, inferiority, anger, and anxiety, were identified (Fig 2). Calmness was the emotion mentioned most in the focus group (5.33%; Fig 2), followed by anxiety, touched, commitment, healing, curiosity, excitement and enjoyment (4.00%; Fig 2). Then there followed by hatred, regret, discouragement, fear, longing, sympathy, peacefulness, interest, pleasantness, joy, happiness, courage, relief and energetic (2.67%; Fig 2). Finally, the least frequent emotions mentioned are anger, jealousy, sadness, frustration, loneliness, disgust, inferiority, stressed, affection, satisfied, affinity, pride, anticipation, respect, gratefulness and superiority (1.33%; Fig 2). The percentages of the emotions are summarised in Fig 2.

Fig 2 Chart comparing emotions mentioned in participants’ transcripts.