Precedent Knowledge: Practicing Designers’ Perspectives and Experiences

This basic qualitative study informed by a hermeneutics approach presents how practicing designers across multiple domains of design define the construct of precedent knowledge, a form of design knowledge, and how they collect and use it in their design work. Interviews were conducted with 18 practicing designers across multiple domains of design, including fashion, product, graphic, game, instructional, and media design. Whether they used the specific term “precedent” or not, the study participants were able to address and discuss their precedent knowledge. They also reported multiple and varied sources of precedent, as well as multiple and varied practices in gathering and using precedent. The findings from this study verify, extend, and refine the construct map (included in this manuscript) resulting from a prior systematic literature review. Extensions to the construct map are use of precedent to assess innovation, and understanding of precedent as pre-schematized knowledge.