Designerly Ways to Theoretical Insight - Visualisation as a means to explore, discuss and understand design theory

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by dhado

This paper investigates how design students learn from visualising theory within design education. It argues that applying tools and techniques from design practice creates an entrance to theoretical content. Based on teaching experiences in an MA course in design methodology at Design School Kolding, student evaluations and feedback are used alongside a classification of visualisations from a course exercise. The findings show that visualising theory supports knowledge construction through personally meaningful expression of concepts.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages10

Reading Time25 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

Teaching Design Methodology

Designerly Ways to Theoretical Insight: Visualisation as a means to explore, discuss and understand design theory Anne Louise Bang, Design School Kolding, Denmark Silje Alberthe Kamille Friis, Teko Design & Business, VIA University College, Herning, Denmark Anne Katrine Gøtzsche Gelting, KEA: Copenhagen School of Design and Technology, Denmark RESEARCH 8 Abstract This paper set out to investigate how design students learn from visualising theory in design education. The exploration rests on the assumption that the application of tools and techniques from design practice supports design students with an entrance to the theoretical part of the field. The paper is based on teaching experiences from an MA course in design methodology at Design School Kolding where we use visualisation as a tool to discuss, explore and understand design theory. To throw light on the question, student evaluations and feedback has been included together with a classification of the material from one visualisation exercise. In addition, theories for how to understand designerly ways of knowing and constructing knowledge have been applied as tools to think with in the discussion. The educational approach where design students read, analyse, and visualise theory, appears to be beneficial to the students’ learning process for a number of reasons, which will be discussed in the paper. The main findings indicate that visualising theory is beneficial because it applies a type of practice that the students are familiar with, and supports the construction of new knowledge, by allowing the students to express information and concepts in ways that are personally meaningful to them. Key words visualisation, designerly knowing, design education, design methodology Introduction The use of visualisation as a design tool has been discussed in various ways within the field of design research and in textbooks. During many years design researchers have studied, discussed and acknowledged sketching and drawing as a tool for reflection as well as designing in various ways (see for example Schön, 1983; Cross, 1995; Lawson & Dorst, 2009; Goldschmidt 1991, 2013) . Visualisation has also been the subject or included in textbooks across different design domains, see for example Buxton (2007) on user experience, Olofsson and Sjölen (2005) on product design or Gaimster (2011) on Fashion design) Also method card collections usually include methods where visualisation plays a central role (IDEO, 2002; DSKD, 2011) . Additionally visualisation has been discussed as an ‘assisting’ tool in communicating design and design processes (see for example Roam (2009) on visual thinking in business innovation, Sibbett (2010) on visualisation as meeting facilitation and Rohde (2013) on visual note taking) . Thus, there is a large and diverse body of knowledge and a vast amount of literature, which is concerned with visualisation as a communicative or reflective tool in the design process. In this paper we are specifically concerned with visualisation as a reflective tool but we take a slightly different perspective than most of the cited literature since our aim is to discuss visualisation as a teaching approach in theoretical courses in the design education. We use this study to claim that there is an educational potential in using a designerly approach when teaching theory in design schools. Therefore, instead of exploring visualisation as a design tool, we discuss ways in which visualisation can be integrated as a tool for exploring and learning theory in design education. In recent years at Design School Kolding in Denmark we have applied visualisation exercises in various crossdisciplinary courses at all levels as a tool to discuss, explore and understand design theory. Back in 2009 oneof the authors introduced students to the use of visualisation as a tool for dialogue when reading and making sense of theory (Gelting, 2009) . We decided to further explore

FAQs

What is the main research question of the paper?

How do design students learn from visualising theory in design education? The paper also aims to explain why visualisations work as a pedagogical tool and how they do so.

What educational approach is used in the MA course described?

Students read, analyse, and visualise theory through structured reading assignments, group work, and visualisation exercises focused on processing the readings.

Why does the paper conclude visualising theory benefits students?

It applies familiar types of practice, supports the construction of new knowledge, and lets students express information and concepts in personally meaningful ways.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by dhado