Writing Is Seeing – towards a Designerly Way of Writing

Abstract

In this paper, we address the problem of poor academic prose. Academic writing style has crystallised into a format that is antithetical to its main purpose: to convey complex ideas understandably. We explore this issue from the perspective of design research for two reasons: (1) designers, being visual thinkers, may particularly struggle with the challenges of academic writing and (2) the widespread lack of quality in academic prose creates an opportunity for design to stand out positively. In the paper, we present a style of writing (classic style) that is particularly suitable to the nature of design and the way designers think, and conclude by encouraging design researchers to adopt and adapt classic prose style to write up their papers and theses dissertations.

Keywords:

• design writing
• design research
• design thinking
• academic writing
• classic prose style

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Pinker’s article is clarifying in its title ‘Why academics stink at writing.’

2 See the work of Roberts, Archer, and Baynes (1992) for an elaboration on modelling as the language of design.

3 The author shows that journals in fields such as Management have a higher impact than design research journals. Furthermore, design researchers often draw on theories from other fields whereas other researchers only occasionally use design theory in their research.

4 This could contribute to developing a model of design education that is relevant for everyone, not just for students looking for professional training; as the knowledge economy becomes the norm (Brynjolfsson & McAfee 2012), the higher-level cognitive skills employed in design could offer a useful skill-set for a lifetime of learning and unknown challenges.

5 Design problems are often characterised as wicked (Buchanan 1992) or ill-defined (Rittel and Webber 1973), meaning problems that have no definitive formulation and call for solutions that are neither completely true or false but rather better or worse.

6 See Schön (1983) for an elaboration of this idea.

7 The blackbird on a tree is the example that Thomas and Turner use throughout their book.

8 See Arnheim (1997) for a detailed argument on the unity of perception and thought; the author provides elaborates the idea that thinking is not the privilege of mental processes above and beyond perception but the essential ingredient of perception itself.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

João Ferreira

João Ferreira is a researcher at the Research and Education in Design (REDES) group of the Research Centre for Architecture, Urban Planning and Design. He holds a PhD (2018) in Design from the Delft University of Technology; his doctoral research focussed on teacher-student interaction in the design studio setting. João also holds a master’s degree in communication design from the Lisbon School of Architecture, University of Lisbon (2009). He was involved in the development of the Retail Design specialisation in the design and architecture schools of the University of Delft, where he worked as a teaching assistant and lecturer in design studio classes. João occasionally works as a freelancer in communication design projects.