How do Designers Categorize Information in the Generation Phase of the Creative Process?

In this paper, firstly we provide a wide range of literature review on designer’s cognitive activity in order to bridge informative and generative phase in the early stages of design. In the generation phase of the creative process, designers use various levels of information and execute internal processing. We found that some of this internal processing (especially in encoding, storage and recall) can be described as information categorisation. In this respect, we propose a descriptive model of information processing to generate ideas by integrating a model from cognitive psychology. We conclude by discussing the limitations of current research and perspectives for further work.