Use it or lose it

There’s an old rule in neuroscience that does not alter with age: use it or lose it. It is a hopeful principle when applied to ideation tools because it implies choice. Designers possess both the knowledge and the technology to identify and redress the changes in how they use ideation tools in everyday practice. That includes the physicality of tools and the sense of touch that afford spatial and sensory awareness in the ideation phase also allowing for ideators to return to first thoughts, to check information and learn from re-examination. The question, then, is what happens to design as a reflective practice, and designers ability to use analog tools when the use of digital tools or drawing and reading on screen become the deafult position? Why make notes, draw and read on paper, or build physical sketch models when digital tools seem so much more efficient, and less messy? Yet if designers work to understand fully what they might lose, alongside the new capacities that the digital age has brought the design field, there seems as much reason for excitement as caution.