Implications for an Understanding of Design Practice

Industrial design practice is characterised by the use of design representations as embodiments of design intentions. From the ubiquitous sketch through to high fidelity prototypes, the designer employs a variety of representations to externalise and develop solutions to often illdefined design problems. Reflecting their importance to design activity, efforts have been made to identify, define and classify the attributes of these various representations. This study synthesises these previous efforts in a qualitative analysis of 50 industrial design case-studies identified through literature review. Images of design representations and their associated captions were segmented using thematic criterion, resulting in 419 coded design representations. Results show that the attributes of design representations often defy clear identification and description. New approaches aimed at the identification, description and classification of design representation employed during concept and developmental design are required. These methods must be sensitive to the often ambiguous, richly idiosyncratic and unstructured nature of conceptual design representation. The paper concludes by arguing for approaches to analysis, description and classification that focus upon purpose of use as a strategy to define and explain design representation and the critical role it plays in designerly ways of thinking and action.