ABSTRACT
Fashion historian Laird Borelli says of fashion designers that their sketches are like a download from their brains – as if one gets into their heads and sees ideas (Borelli 2008). I include this inspiration for the materialization of ideas in my support for Nobel prize-winner Herbert Simon’s proposal for the concept of design that is characterized by its focus on what is not but could be (Simon 1969). Consequently, I regard the focus for design research as ideas materialized in sketches and models, as well as the process of the construction of an object or other phenomenon that can be read with a focus on how it is used/experienced. Having said this, there is also a need to focus on the processes through which design is managed.
