The novelty perspectives framework: a new conceptualisation of novelty for cognitive design studies

Two approaches may be applied to gain a view on the cognitive mechanisms involved in creative design ideation: (1) protocol analysis, where the designer verbally reports their processing and inferences are made about cognition based on the resulting protocols; and (2) output-based experiments, where performance metrics linked to some aspect of processing are evaluated and observations are made about cognition based on the results (Hay et al., 2017a). The former approach has been applied prolifically since the inception of design research in the late 1960s, but has been criticised for its subjectivity and unsuitability for studyinglarge samples. Accordingly, controlled output-based approaches, which are characteristic of the behavioural experiments conducted by cognitive psychologists, have seen increasing application in recent years (Dinar et al., 2015).