Ideas, Subjects, and Cycles as Lenses for Understanding the Software Design Process ◾ 185
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Some of the patterns illustrated by these data are unsurprising. For example, the pres-
ence of low-depth cycles meshes with characterizations of soware designers as seeking
“balanced development” of their systems (Adelson and Soloway, 1984). ese cycles oen
occurred at the beginning of the process, and on further investigation, they generally
served to provide the designers with a sense of the solution space (Simon, 1969) before
them. ey were also found at the end of some of the sessions, as the designers made an
eort to organize and coalesce their ideas in a unied way.
Similarly, the presence of single-subject ...