Making Thought Visible

Creative thought is invisible. Sketches of thought not only make it visible to others, so they can study creativity, and to self, to foster creativity. Sketches reveal thought, promote communication, and foster inference and discovery. A range of quantitative and qualitative data from coding sketches, interactions with sketches, and inferences from sketches uphold these conclusions. Creativity seems impossible to study. First, we don't know what it means. And second, whatever it means, it goes on in the mind, invisibly. Whatever it is, creativity is not just wild ideas, unusual associations, weird combinations. Any dumb machine can do that, probably more effectively than people. Although it may sound paradoxical, creativity is constrained. Creative solutions may indeed appear wild, unusual, and weird, but they suit needs, fit goals, satisfy contraints. Thus, creativity has two components: divergence and convergence. Divergent thinking expands, each connection leading outwards to many more. Convergent thinking reduces, requiring connections across the divergent ones. Either of these processes quickly exhaust the mental workspace. There is an ancient solution: make the mental workspace physical, put it in front of the eyes instead of behind them. One of the most flexible cognitive tools is a sketch or diagram. Just as a stick lengthens the arm, a sketch lengthens and broadens the mind. Sketches externalize thought, expand the mind, force abstraction, provide a playground for exploration of new ideas, make ideas visible to self and others. They are a natural tool for designers as they map space onto space. They are often augmented, especially in social situations, with talk and gesture, primarily iconic and deictic gestures. And, a boon for researchers, sketches provide data for those who wish to study design. Externalizing ideas onto paper has benefits beyond extending the mind. Paper provides a space, a space that can be organized, just as we organize physical spaces to suit our needs and just as the natural physical organization of space subserves memory and behavior. Thus, a diagram invites structuring a set of ideas using a variety of devices (postion, indentation, size, etc.). Diagrams make abstract problems concrete, hence easier to conceptualize. They promote inferences based on spatial reasoning, proximity, direction, distance. For designers of any kind, diagrams invite not just organization but also reorganization, easy trial and error. But, as for many tools, cognitive or physical, diagrams have disadvantages as well, many of them their very advantages. They make the abstract concrete. …