PhD student and assistant professor. This is my PhD-project title and abstract:

Knowledge sources for wayfinding design: with an emphasis on the role of knowledge embedded in the artefact.

Abstract
This thesis is an epistemological investigation of the relationship between different kinds of knowledge involved in design for wayfinding. The thesis examines the role of pre-existing theories and research, prescriptive documents (such as textbooks, manuals, standards and regulations), design methods and user involvement, designers’ explicit and tacit knowledge (such as internalised repertoires of solution types and ‘prejudices’), and – in particular – the role of knowledge embedded in the artefact (i.e. in the form of conventions, pattern languages and genres, and in actual existing wayfinding systems with associated process documentation such as sketches, visualisations, prototypes and specifications). The research methods used are literature reviews, document analysis, interviews, observations and surveys. The research will contribute to an understanding of how knowledge exists and is created, discovered, elicited, used, re-used and disseminated in the process of designing wayfinding systems. The result will also contribute to a more general understanding of how designers experience and reflect on their own use of knowledge, and how artefacts play a role in the formation, representation and dissemination of knowledge.