This paper presents a quantitative method for analysing process models of designing independently of the specific design domain. The method uses the situated function-behaviour-structure framework as the basis for a simulation model of a designer acting according to these models. The results of these simulations are sequences of design issues that are analysed using cumulative occurrence graphs with associated quantitative measures. The paper illustrates the approach by analysing and comparing three models of designing from different domains: Pahl and Beitz' model of engineering design, the rational unified process of software design and a model of design for six sigma in service design. The quantitative results indicate some commonalities across the different models. These commonalities are related to the start of cognitive effort spent on design issues, the continuity of the cognitive effort throughout the design process and the constancy of the speed with which design issues are generated.

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Design Computing and Cognition has been through the years a recurring topic of AI EDAM special issues. A regular stream of articles is constituted by updated and extended versions of papers presented at the homonymous conference, the International Conference on Design Computing and Cognition (http://dccconferences.org/). Accordingly to such tradition, the call for this special issue was planned, which was launched after the 2018 edition, namely the Eight of the series, held at Politecnico di Milano, Italy, in the Lecco Campus on July 2-4, 2018.This special issue embeds, therefore, a selection of suitably extended and updated papers that were presented at DCC'18 and are complemented by further contributions aimed to depict the state-of-the-art research and some relevant trends in this domain.The scope of this research domain is indeed quite broad, but it inherits its breath from the holistic role that Design has in the evolution of society. The need for designing is led by a society's view that intends Design as a means to improve or add value to human existence well beyond simple subsistence. Everything potentially could be designed from scratch or improved, every time the world around us is unsuited to our needs. In this sense, the world is increasingly "artificial" rather than a naturally occurring one. Designing is a fundamental precursor to manufacturing, fabrication, construction, or implementation, and Design is a primarily important topic in disciplines ranging from the more commonly associated fields of Engineering, Computer Science and Architecture, to emerging areas in the social and life sciences.The growth of awareness about the fundamental importance of "designing" changes in all dimensions of society is accompanied by the increased rigor of research in Design, but also by the differentiation of research motivations and objectives. With the aim of introducing the papers of this special issue, but also to frame the research objectives and methods that emerged from this selection and by the observation of further publications in the Design domain, we refer here to three complementary dimensions which concur to the classification of research activities in design with respect to their motivation, methodological approach, and working data.The first dimension refers to the research intent and follows the three epistemological interpretations of the relationships between science and design introduced by Cross (2001): scientific design, design science, and a science of design: