representations. Design skill, then,
is not just a question of applying mechanical force to exterior
objects; it also includes care, judgment, and dexterity in a fine-tuning
of movements that can reach a
rhythmic fluency, which is the
trademark of a skilled practitioner.
• We propose particular notions
of place and landscape to explain
how the design environment is
performed in the work of designers and how a situational ground
is enacted and transformed as
design artifacts emerge. We suggest the concept of an “emerging
landscape” as an alternative to
Herbert Simon’s famous notion of
an abstract design space [ 9], an
experienced landscape in which
the designer journeys and dwells.
How do designers express and
experience design objects? Our
suggestion here is to describe and
explain the evolution of the design
through the designer’s performance
of it. This includes considering
narrative temporalities, fictional
spaces, and creative constraints as
basic features of performing design,
and looking at characteristics of
staging design events. We suggest
an interventionist, participative,
and experiential understanding of
design as the purposeful staging
and accomplishing of events.
Can these designerly skills also
be set in motion to draw things
together, not just to draw pretty
things?
March + April 2012
interactions
This framing of design com-
petence, ethnographic studies of
design practices, and experiments
in the Atelier project led us to think
of designerly drawing skills as:
• systematically cultivating the
“art of seeing”: working with meta-
phors, analogies, and themes that
help express, contrast, and intensify
the design concept to create a com-
mon understanding, evoke imagina-
tions rather than prescribe, invite
others into a dialogue, and the like;
• engaging with a plethora of
materials—inspirational resources
as well as material conceptualizations of the design concept (text,
diagrams, comics, video, sketches,
rough sketch models, virtual 3-D
models, CAD drawings) with the
diversity of design artifacts increasing the designer’s possibilities of
evaluating the design, as each
representation helps make particular aspects of a design visible;
• engaging in a movement of
closing and opening, in a rhythm
that is characterized by formulat-
ing themes, searching for facts, and
experimenting with different solu-
tions; and
• being able to work in a mean-
dering way, with “floating con-
cepts,” while maintaining things at
different stages of incompletion.
In the book we especially
elaborate upon drawing strategies of metamorphing, place
taking, and performing.
How do designers mobilize, manage, and transform artifacts and
their interpretations? Our approach
explores how the web of “
constituents” is weaved around a drifting
object of design as the designer
engages in its transformations.
Design work is looked on as an
act of “metamorphing,” in which
design concepts are envisioned
and realized through objectifying and manipulating a variety of
Together: Participatory Drawing
The Atelier project inspired us to
look for ways to combine design as
designerly drawing practices with
a participative approach to design,
reaching out to and engaging stake-
holders, eliciting their cooperation
and creative contribution. Since
design ends with the delivery of
one of the constituents of its object,
its embodiment, then it is this:
the very thing of design itself. The
relationship between designers
and stakeholders becomes crucial
when this design thing takes form.
