Abstract

The form-giving process is perhaps the most confusing one faced by designers: it is influenced by an enormous number of variables, some explicit but others latent and tacit. Furthermore, the participation of many of the designer's psychological systems (cognition, perception, affect, etc.) means that it can be explained from many points of view, making it difficult to study. This has given rise to many explanatory-descriptive models that only capture part of the complexity behind it. Therefore, it can be concluded that a comprehensive model of this process, independent of the design domain, would allow these difficulties to be resolved. Due to the difficulty of this task, it is proposed that a first step in problem resolution has to be determining the important parameters and structural constituents that an integrated model of form-giving must possess. Consequently, a systematic literature review method for finding 36 models was carried out. They were described using eight emerging categories found through the use of a set of analysis tables. A model’s comparison under these categories allowed for proposing here 13 general requirements and a general definition of the form-giving process.