ideas in things

Age-old analogue ideation tools and methods, such as sketching and physical modelling, may have taken a back seat in the digital culture when content-creating tools like ChatGPT or Copilot have become mainstream. So, what then the future of traditional ideation tools such as pen and paper? Nesta (2019) found that organisations are becoming less experimental and more risk-averse in their approach to digital technologies - they prefer to let others experiment and then adopt the ideas that work best. Arguably, then, at least at individual level, analogue tools remain useful to designers to stimulate and capture the flow of ideas. And so, the pencil could be seen as a tool performing a role similar to that of a craftsman's tool - a tool that reflects a hands-on approach to design that connects with the idea of making things. That is, applying hand and mind to ideation, as in "thinking with a pencil" reflects the concept of the thing as idea. Or in the words of the poet William Carlos Williams: 'Say it, no ideas but in things'. That is, to focus on objects rather than mere concepts, on actual things rather than abstract characteristics of things. That is, concrete rather than abstract ideas ('idea' understood as a basic element of thought that can be either visual, concrete or abstract)..Considering the concept of the thing as idea, Dough Stows, author of The Wisdom of Our Hands (2022) writes: 'The mention of any object creates a visualised idea in our minds - we form an idea of the thing. Moreover, metaphors provide the basis of all human creativity, and those metaphors must of necessity be drawn from real tools, real processes, real understanding of concrete phenomenon, for the ideas that have merit are drawn from reality, from the experience of things.' This may suggest that designers overall favour concrete or visual ideas, or both over abstract ones. If so, this may resonate with a central feature of design activity where designers rely on 'generating fairly quickly a satisfactory solution rather than a prolonged analysis of the problem' (Nigel Cross, 1982)