Overview

Rough sketches made by designers are instrumental in defining a new object s characteristics. They both reveal and influence the sociocognitive design process. In the former role, rough sketches provide an account of the process and its periods of variable intensity and breaks. As mediators, they give a pattern to design activities. They draw attention to changes in the nature of the work and in discussions between the parties concerned (linguistic changes especially). They reflect, and are themselves, representations of the product being designed. They are the product of this activity and an incomplete record of it. They are also resources which the people involved use to convince, explain, recollect, revise, imagine, come to an agreement, and so on. They therefore chronicle the activity, the relationships of those involved, and the way in which the future product is progressively represented. They provide insight into the design activity (Vinck et al. 1995). Therefore, they both reflect (as inaccurate disclosers) the socio-cognitive design process and act as mediating objects (active instruments).

Ethnographic observation and the recording of linguistic changes and graphic productions therefore help us better understand the engineer s work and the design process, which is generally thought to be cognitive, intellectual, and both rational and creative. Various ethnographic studies have already shown that the myth of the designer working alone soon falls apart when processes of industrial design are investigated. (See chapter 4 above; see also Bucciarelli 1994.) On the contrary, the work is shared by various individuals, who...