The process of design cycles through with refinements and improvements until designers are as satisfied as they can be that the product designed on paper or in models or simulations will meet the criteria when it is actually manufactured and in operation. Design is reflective and collaborative, and designers use reflection and collaboration to help them justify why they are doing something and why they believe it will be successful. In process talk students tell why they think something will work. Design depends on representations as tools for thought and problem solving. Drawings, sketches, and models, with labels and measurements and specifications for materials are key.
Different representations are appropriate to different levels of abstraction in solving the problem.
Design is different than inquiry. It is a process that gives feedback to its practitioners and allows them to generate alternatives. Design engages real people in solving real problems that are based on the structure, function, and behavior of real organisms, or chemicals, or materials and objects, in the real world, testing principles of heredity, or the structure of matter, or the nature of physics. Our hypothesis is that this can be accomplished by situating science and math learning in design problem solving and helping teachers learn to be facilitators of collaborative student-centered design activity. An essential component in making this approach to learning science and math work is the scaffolding of the complex reasoning and process skills necessary to negotiate an ill-structured problem domain.