Master of Landscape Architecture / Department of Landscape Architecture/Regional and Community Planning / Katie (Mary Catherine) Kingery-Page / Landscape architecture lacks evidence-based theory for the communicative effectiveness of graphics used in representing design ideas to stakeholders. For the purpose of this study, communicative effectiveness is operationalized as visual communication that expresses accurately the design in a way that the receiver understands the intentions — programmatic, experiential or otherwise — of the design. People need graphic representation to grasp abstract concepts, and drawings can help one imagine what a place can look like years down the road (Hester 2007). Graphics inform the viewer about essential elements of the design and the broader impact that design has on future experiences (Coe 1981). Knowing how people perceive and understand design graphics is key to communicating effectively to clients and other stakeholders. Graphic communication is complex, and no formula exists for communication in landscape architecture (Kingery-Page and Hahn 2012; Ware 2014). The questions guiding this study are: What graphic representation styles increase the non-designers’ understanding of design proposals? Do degrees of abstraction or realism affect understanding of the design drawing? I identified three research phases to adequately answer the questions: Phase One: Site Design Development — I designed a site plan for the Manhattan Arts Center (MAC), a community arts center in Manhattan, Kansas. Design intentions were carefully outlined based on stakeholder input. Phase Two: Graphics Production — Visual representations of the site design were developed in styles ranging from formal abstract to more realistic, based on review of precedent images in academic and professional architectural publications. Phase Three: Evaluation of Graphics Through Focus Groups— The communicative effectiveness of the representations were tested through three focus groups of stakeholders. Content analysis of the recorded focus group sessions revealed patterns of understanding the graphics. Overall, participants revealed that the more real the abstraction, the less understanding takes place. Formal Abstraction communicates the physical dimensions of the design most effectively, and Formal Abstraction has relatively the same communicative effectiveness regarding experience of place. Quantitative and qualitative data informed the creation of theories and a framework practitioners may use for selecting the most effective graphic communication options appropriate to project and audience. Key Words: Effective visual representation, visual communication, graphic style, Formal Abstraction, Semi-Realistic Abstraction, Realistic Abstraction, drawings, design intent, design ideas, accurate, perception, understanding, stakeholders, non-designer, landscape architecture.

The engineering design process can underutilize nature-based solutions during infrastructure development. Instances of nature within the built environment are reflections of the human-nature connection, which may alter how designers ideate solutions to a given design task, especially through virtual reality (VR) as an embodied perspective taking platform. Embodied VR helps designers "see" as an end-user sees, inclusive of the natural environment through the uptake of an avatar, such as a bird or fish. Embodied VR emits empathy toward the avatar, e.g., to see as a bird in VR, one tends to feel and think as a bird. Furthermore, embodied VR also impacts altruistic behavior toward the environment, specifically through proenvironmental behaviors. However, limited research discovers the impact of embodied VR on the human-nature connection and if embodied VR has any impact on how designers ideate, specifically surrounding nature-based solutions as a form of a proenvironmental behavior during the design process. This research first presents a formal measurement of embodied VR's impact on the human-nature connection and maps this impact toward design-related proenvironmental behaviors through design ideas, i. e., tracking changes in nature-based design choices. The design study consisted of three groups of engineering undergraduate students which were given a case study and plan review: a VR group embodying a bird (n=35), a self-lens VR group (n=34), and a control group (n=33). The case study was about a federal mandate to minimize combined sewer overflow in a neighborhood within Cincinnati, OH. Following the plan review, VR groups were given a VR walkthrough or flythrough of the case study area of interest as a selected avatar (embodied:bird, self-lens:oneself). Participants were tested for their connectedness to nature and a mock-design charrette was held to measure engineering design ideas. Verbal protocol analysis was followed, instructing participants to think aloud. Design ideation sessions were recorded and manually transcribed. The results of the study indicated that embodiment impacts the human-nature connection based on participants' perceived connection to nature. Only the bird group witnessed an increase in connectedness to nature, whereas the self-lens and control groups did not report any change. This change in connectedness to nature was also confirmed by engineering design ideas. The bird group was more likely to ideate green-thinking designs to solve the stormwater issue and benefit both nature and socioeconomic conditions, whereas the control group mostly discussed gray designs as the catalyst for minimizing combined sewer overflows. The self-lens group also mentioned green design ideas as well as socioeconomic change, but mostly placed the beneficiary of the design toward people rather than nature in the bird group. The mode of analysis for these findings was driven by thematic content analysis, an exploration of design space as a function of semantic distance, and large language models (LLMs) to synthesize design ideas and themes. An LLM's performance lent accuracy to the design ideas in comparison to thematic content analysis, but struggled to cross-compare groups to provide generalizable findings. This research is intended to benefit the engineering design process with a) the benefit of perspective-taking on design ideas based on lenses of embodied VR and b) various methods to supplement thematic content analysis for coding design ideas. / Doctor of Philosophy / The use of nature in the constructed world, such as rain gardens and natural streams for moving stormwater, is underused during the design process. Virtual reality (VR) programs, like embodiment, have the potential to increase the incorporation of nature and nature-based elements during design. Embodiment is the process of taking on the vantage point of another being or avatar, such as a bird, fish, insect, or other being, in order to see and move as the avatar does. Embodied VR increases the likelihood that the VR participant will act favorably to the subject, specifically when the natural environment is involved. For example, embodying another individual cutting down trees in a virtual forest increased the likelihood that individuals would act favorably to the environment, such as through recycling or conserving energy (Ahn and Bailenson, 2012). Ultimately, this research measures the level of connection participants feel with the environment after an embodied VR experience and motions to discover if this change in connection to nature impacts how participants might design a solution to a problem. This design experiment is based on a case study, which all participants were provided alongside supplemental plan documents of the case. The case study used is about stormwater issues and overflows from infrastructure in a neighborhood in Cincinnati, OH, where key decision-makers were mandated by the federal government to minimize the overflows. The bird group (a bird avatar) performed a fly-through in the area of interest in VR, whereas the self-lens group (first-person, embodying oneself) walked through the same area. The control group received no VR intervention. Following the intervention, participants were asked to re-design the neighborhood and orate their recorded solution. Then, participants were required to score a questionnaire measuring their connectedness to nature. The results show that when people experience the space as a bird in virtual reality, they felt more connected to nature and also included more ideas related to nature in their design. More specifically, ideas involving green infrastructure (using nature-based elements, e.g., rain gardens and streams) and socioeconomic benefits were brought up by the bird group. This research presents embodiment as a tool that can change how engineers design. As stormwater policy has called for more use of green infrastructure (notably, through the Environmental Protection Agency), embodiment may be used during the design process to meet this call from governmental programs. Furthermore, this research impacts how embodiment's effects on design can be interpreted, specifically through quantitative methods through natural language processing and the use of large language models to analyze data and report back on design-related findings. This research is intended to benefit the design process with a) using different avatars in embodiment to impact design ideas and b) a comparison of thematic content analysis and large language models in summarizing design ideas and themes.

Design idea generation is a significant part of the designer’s work and most frequently associated with creative problem-solving. However, an outstanding challenge in design is translating empirical findings or other inspirational sources into ideas or knowledge that inform design, also known as generating implications for design. Though great efforts have been made to bridge this gap, there is still no overall consensus on how to appropriately incorporate research data and external sources into the design ideas generation process. Besides, design ideas generation is a process that is rooted in personal knowledge. It is often considered a precedent-based type of reasoning where knowledge is continuously transformed to frame new insights and this creative leap across the divide is perceived to be difficult, especially for novice and student designers. Based on the grounded theory, the author conducted open-ended, semi-structured qualitative interviews with eighteen designers, including design professors, practitioners and students to learn about the knowledge on how the contemporary designers select inspirational sources and transform them into ideas with appropriate methods in different contexts, the design mindset involved during the iterative and generative ideation process, and the criteria of evaluating design ideas. The results indicated seven commonly used categories of sources: ‘personal,’ ‘daily stuff,’ ’media,’ ‘technology,’ ‘knowledge of other disciplines,’ ‘fieldwork’ and ‘design practice.’ The methods could be allocated to three stages: investigation, analysis and synthesis. In each specific phase, designers applied different methods to cope with various sources for various purposes, depending on different situations. A general framework was built for designers to conduct a proper selection of sources and methods to transform them into the knowledge that informs design. The study emphasized the flow of inspirational sources, the relationship between sources and methods, and the transformation procedures which tried to help the designer get more scientific structure and give design students more practical guidance in idea generation. The comparison was continuously made within the matrix structure on the matter of sources and methods selection, the role of design research and ideation process among different groups of designers in academics and practice, which revealed the knowledge and skills missed or ignored in university education and challenges in the design project development. The implications for design education were discussed, such as the development of design students’ competence, especially the skills that should be learned in a new digital society to help design education refine idea generation methods and improve corresponding techniques to discover a dynamic balance between theory and practice. / Das Hervorbringen von Designideen ist ein wichtiger Teil der Arbeit eines Designers und wird meistens mit kreativer Problemlösung assoziiert. Eine besondere Herausforderung ist dabei die mentale Verarbeitung von Informationen und Inspirationsquellen und deren Umsetzung zu Gestaltungsentwürfe. Dieser kreative Prozess wird vor allem von Anfängern und Designstudenten als schwierig wahrgenommen. Trotz vielfältiger Forschungsanstrengungen gibt es noch immer keinen allgemeinen Konsens dazu, auf welche Weise Informationen in den Designprozess einbezogen werden und wie sich diese präzedenzbasierte Art des Denkens vermitteln lässt. Da dieser Prozess stark auf Erfahrung basiert, wird er oft als Präzedenz-basierte Art des Denkens betrachtet, bei welcher Wissen fortwährend in neue Erkenntnisse umgeformt wird. Dieser kreative Akt wird vor allem von Anfängern als schwierig wahrgenommen. Dem Paradigma der 'grounded theory' folgend hat die Autorin ergebnisoffene, teilstrukturierte und qualitative Interviews mit Designern durchgeführt. Interviewt wurden Designprofessoren, Praktiker und Studenten, um zu erfahren, wie zeitgenössische Designer Inspirationsquellen recherchieren und mit welchen Methoden sie diese in unterschiedlichen Kontexten zu Ideen umwandeln. Weiterhin werden die Vorgehensweise der Designer während des Gestaltungsprozesses und die Evaluationskriterien der Designideen untersucht. Anhand der Untersuchungsergebnisse lassen sich sieben Informationskategorien unterscheiden: Persönliches, alltägliches, mediales, technologisches Wissen sowie Wissen aus anderen Fachbereichen, aus Feldforschung und aus der Designpraxis. Diese Methoden finden im Designprozess innerhalb von drei Phasen Anwendung: Untersuchung, Analyse und Synthese. In jeder dieser Phase wenden Designer dabei verschiedene Methoden an, um Informationsquellen aufzubereiten und in den Designprozess einzubeziehen. Ausgehend von einem Prozessmodell untersuchte die durchgeführte Studie insbesondere die Einbeziehung von Inspirationsquellen, die Beziehung zwischen Quellen und Methoden und die mentalen Verarbeitungsprozeduren. Mit den erzielten Ergebnissen unterstützt die Untersuchung die Designforschung und gibt Designstudenten eine fundierte Anleitung für die Entwicklung von Ideen. Ein besonderer Fokus der Studie lag auf dem Vergleich von verschiedenen Gruppen von Designern – insbesondere auch mit Blick auf den Unterschied zwischen tären Ausbildung vermittelten Kompetenzen mit den praktischen Anforderungen korrespondieren. Darauf aufbauend diskutiert diese Arbeit Empfehlungen für die Designausbildung, z.B. hinsichtlich des Kontexts der digitalen Gesellschaft oder der Verfeinerung von Methoden der Ideengenerierung. Damit soll die Arbeit dazu beitragen, die Designausbildung zu verbessern und ein dynamisches Gleichgewicht zwischen Theorie und Praxis zu ermöglichen.