Nigel Cross (born 1942) is a British academic, a design researcher and educator, Emeritus Professor of Design Studies at
The Open University,[1] United Kingdom, where he was responsible for developing the first distance-learning courses in design in the early 1970s.[2] He was an editor of the journal Design Studies from its inception in 1979, Editor in Chief 1984-2017 and Emeritus Editor in Chief 2018-23. Cross helped clarify and develop the concept of
design thinking (or "designerly ways of knowing") related to the development of design as an
academic discipline.[3][4] He is one of the key people of the
Design Research Society.
Nigel Cross began his
design research in the 1960s with studies of "simulated"
computer-aided design systems where the purported simulator was actually a human operator, using text and graphical communication via
CCTV. Cross later referred to this as a kind of
Reverse Turing test;[6] in interaction design this kind of study later became known as a
Wizard of Oz experiment. He also applied early forms of
protocol analysis to these experiments. His PhD on ‘Human and Machine Roles in Computer Aided Design’ was expanded into the book The Automated Architect (1977), which was critical of some of the computer-aided architectural design work of that time.
In 1971, Cross co-organised the first major conference of the
Design Research Society (DRS), on Design Participation. He continued to play significant roles in DRS, and was its President from 2006-2017.
Early interests in
design methods led to an edited book of foundational papers, Developments in Design Methodology (1984) and a textbook of Engineering Design Methods (1989, now in a 5th edition).
Subsequently his research interests turned more to design cognition or
design thinking. In 1991 Cross established, with colleagues at
Delft University of Technology, the international series of Design Thinking Research Symposia (DTRS).[7] The second DTRS meeting at Delft (1994) laid the foundations for much subsequent work on protocol and other studies of design activity.[8]
Writings
In 1982 Cross published a journal article 'Designerly Ways of Knowing',[9] drawing on design research to show Design as having its own intellectual and practical culture as a basis for education, and contrasting it with cultures of Science and Arts & Humanities. This was a clarification of the idea that "There are things to know, ways of knowing them and ways of finding out about them that are specific to the design area". The paper established the concept of design as a discipline, now widely adopted in modern design theory, education and practice.[10][11]
In subsequent papers, Cross continued to identify and clarify the cognitive and practical skills underlying design thinking,[12][13] and the nature of expertise in design.[14][15]
With Kees Dorst, Cross advanced the concept of 'co-evolution' in design,[16] observing how designers progress a project by developing the problem space and solution space in parallel, with activities in each 'space' cross-fertilising the other. Understanding "how designers think and work" has been a significant theme in his writings, culminating in the book Design Thinking (2011, now in a 2nd edition).
Books
Design Participation (editor), Academy Editions, London, 1972.
The Automated Architect: human and machine roles in design, Pion Ltd., London, 1977.
ISBN0850860571
Developments in Design Methodology (editor), John Wiley and Sons Ltd., Chichester, 1984.
ISBN0471102482
Research in Design Thinking (co-editor with K. Dorst and N. Roozenburg), Delft University Press, Delft, 1992.
ISBN9062757960
Analysing Design Activity (co-editor with H. Christiaans and K. Dorst), John Wiley & Sons Ltd., Chichester, 1996.
ISBN0471960608
Designerly Ways of Knowing, Birkhauser, Basel, Switzerland, 2007.
ISBN9783764384845
Engineering Design Methods: strategies for product design (fifth edition), John Wiley and Sons Ltd., Chichester and New York, 2021.
ISBN9781119724377
Design Thinking: understanding how designers think and work (second edition), Bloomsbury, Oxford and New York, 2023.
ISBN9781350305069;
ISBN9781350305021
^Christensen, B. & Ball, L. (2019) 'Building a discipline: Indicators of expansion, integration and consolidation in design research across four decades'. Design Studies. 65, 18-34.
^Cross, Nigel (2001) 'Design Cognition: Results from protocol and other empirical studies of design activity'. In C. Eastman, M. McCracken and W. Newstatter (eds.) Design Knowing and Learning: Cognition in Design Education, Elsevier, Oxford, pp. 79-103.
ISBN0080438687
^Cross, Nigel (2004) 'Expertise in design: an overview'. Design Studies, 25 (5), 427-441.
^Cross, Nigel (2018) 'Expertise in Professional Design' in K. Anders Ericsson, R. Hoffman, A. Kozbelt, A. M. Williams (eds.) Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (2nd Edition), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK and New York USA. pp. 327-388.
ISBN9781107137554
^Kees Dorst & Nigel Cross (2001) 'Creativity in the design process: co-evolution of problem–solution'. Design Studies, 22 (5) 425-437.