Visualising the Design Process with Dynamic Graph

concept

Designers have often forgotten after the completion of the design, but throughout viewing these recorded graphics can evoke their memory, and provide more inspiration to and thoughts.

Why Designers Forget or Lose Information

Design work is a continuous decision-making process. However, in reality, designers often jump from one state to another instead of changing things step-by-step.
Because of this “jumping” process, some important information is easily lost. Examples include:

Quick design glimpses

Small flashes of ideas that come and go.

Shape evolution steps

The exact transitions between shapes during modeling.

Hidden states

Certain in-between states that are closer to the designer’s original idea but never get saved.

Memory difficulty after finishing

Designers often forget why they made certain decisions, or they forget shapes they tried and deleted.
These missing pieces are very important for understanding design thinking and the whole design process.

How Information Visualization Helps Memory and Retrieval

This study used a dynamic graph system to record the design process using information visualization. It helps capture lost information and helps designers remember their ideas.
Main functions and benefits:

Recording jumping states continuously

The system turns the design process into a sequence of animations. Designers can clearly see how each step evolved, including states they usually skip over.

Automatic background recording

Besides manually saved states, the system auto-records shape changes (for example, once per minute) so that even unsaved ideas are captured.

Recovering lost inspiration

When designers feel stuck, they can review the recorded process. Watching the past steps often gives them new ideas.

Triggering memory

When researchers showed designers the automatically recorded shapes, designers realized many forgotten ideas were hidden inside. Viewing these shapes helps them recall thoughts they had already forgotten.

Better efficiency and reflection

Designers gain not only the final result but also a full record of the design journey. They can review developing features and ideas that did not continue. This helps with reflection, learning, and improving future work.

Core concept

This system can not only become a platform for data storage,
but also can be linked to the other cloud database and shaping this platform as
a “design database”

Ref

Chang, W.-H. L. a. T.-W. (2012). “Visualising the Design Process with Dynamic Graph.”