Supporting design thinking with evocative digital diagrams

This chapter presents a digitally supported approach to creative thinking through diagrammatic visuals. Diagrammatic visuals can support designing by evoking thoughts and by raising open questions in conversational exchanges with designers. It focuses on the educational context of the architectural design studio, and introduces a software tool, named Algogram, which allows designers to employ diagrams in challenging conventional assumptions and for generating new ideas. Results from testing the tool and the way of approaching conceptual designing encouraged by it within an undergraduate design studio suggest a potential for refocusing of attention in digital design support development towards diagrams. In addition to the conventional emphasis on the variety of tool features and the ability of the tool to assist representational modeling of form, this chapter shows how a diagram-based approach can acknowledge and harness the creative potential of designers' constructive seeing.