Introduction to This Special Issue on Understanding Design Thinking

The Special Issue of the 2014 Journal of Human-Computer Interaction presents articles on understanding design thinking. Bauer,Newman, and Kientz report on interviews with designers of context-aware systems, finding that shifts in both types of context transform prototyping practices, and the authors use these data to refactor the developer-designer relationship. Snyder and colleagues provide three case studies illustrating the use of visual narratives in the design process. Miller, Bailey, and Kirlik introduce a peer-assessment scheme that increases reliability by asking student raters to estimate the distribution of their peers' responses. Their article shows the application of their 'truth serum' approach in a design class. Kim and Ryu's article also looks at assessment but focuses on the ideation aspect of the design process. They explore differences between the way professional designers and design students evaluate and revise design ideas as they create them.