ABSTRACT
Insights about complex and ambiguous environments can spot opportunities for new products and services. This paper develops a functional model of design insight by mapping verbalized statements associated with generative sensing onto a semantic scale established by the Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) dimension of Semantics. Analysis of discussions about co-creation workshops reveals that insights develop when observations are gradually represented in terms of abstract, general, and decontextualized features rather than their concrete, contextual, and incidental details or their abstract features alone. This study will show that knowledge-building associated with design insight entails a series of movements ‘up and down’ a semantic scale ranging from concrete details to decontextualized features. The decontextualization eventually reaches a limit, at which point a hypothesis is offered to explain the observations. The patterns of movements indicate that insight requires simultaneous decontextualization of evidence and observations into highly condensed meanings and their recontextualization into a new hypothesis.
