A Test of the Structural Alignment Model for Similarity Judgements of Design Concepts

This paper presents a test of the Structural Alignment (SA) model of psychological similarity judgements on a sample of design students and recent graduates (n = 37) making similarity judgements of early-stage design concepts (n = 30) represented by sketches and text. A correlational, quasi-experiment was conducted to test five predictions derived from the SA model. It was found that similarity can be predicted as a function of the common and different features of a pair of design concepts, and similarity is positively associated with the number of commonalities, indicating that design concept similarity judgements are carried out via a process of comparison. However, one of the five hypotheses that was unique to the SA model was falsified, meaning the SA model was rejected and it was not possible to determine the nature of the comparison process.