Constructing design activity in words: Exploring linguistic methods to analyse the design process

Analysing transcripts of design activity typically involve either close reading or manual coding of data, which limits the amount of data that can be analysed. In contrast, we explore a machine-learning based linguistic analysis tool called Empath to identify patterns of reasoning in design talk. The data we use derives from the Design Thinking Research Symposium (DTRS) shared-data workshops which we analyse to look at two contrasting aspects of design talk: the expression of tentativeness, characterising designers' generative thinking; and the articulation of explanations, characterising their deductive or analytical thinking. We show, at the level of speech turns, how tentativeness and explanation relate to, and overlap, each other. Finally, we discuss the limitations of this ‘linguistic analysis at scale’ approach.