Looking at how we can communicate and make sense of qualitative data like this just now. My current thinking is that it’s probably not possible – we would end up with too much information with very few efficient validation mechanisms and there is absolutely nothing in the current industry that values this as a mainstream method of design. Here’s a hint at why wrt information : http://designthinkingthoughts.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/information-theory-in-bim-1.html

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. The Acropolis example I chucked in above is there because the designers created that ‘object’ on site. There are elements carefully placed on that site that have been done only with consideration of the journey through the site (Athena comes into (and out of) view too nicely… more like a cinematic event). The conception was a shared one sketched out on site – this is perhaps the closest we can get to realising this level of complexity and conception (and it was arguably simple in that it was a religio-socio-cultural artifact, not a messy interstitial, culturally ambiguous apolitical building).

It’s maybe a problem of embodiment itself. If I were to record myself designing a building I would only be recording the artifacts and representations I produce. How would I record the nebulous intention or conception that can only be expressed through (necessarily) imprecise language that needs conversation to convey its meaning…

For the coffee cup here, life is simple – we only have one immediate design conception but I’ll bet there would be more (or a single more complex one). Even with that example, I could easily respond by designing a super-glue laced cup which would most definitely change your attitude to drinking coffee (from a cup designed by me). In reality, the conception here would be much more complex.

So there is only so much complexity we can handle in our minds and I (designer) might need to get rid of options by communication with you – this is where the semiotics kicks in and your point about hoping we share a language is important. Believe it or not, in a good design process, a lot of time is doing precisely this – aligning our language. So I wouldn’t just do a porcelain cone to hope that you understand, I would do that to test your understanding, learn where I understand more, where you understand more, and slowly we reach a shared language.

As another example, the ODS2.0 requirement ‘searchy’ came from this – everyone understands what it means in their own way but until we start to talk about what this means with respect to each other, we don’t get anywhere (and a lot of problems (a *lot*) in architecture arise through this simple difference between expectation and reality.

Paper on the life of Schön is :
Waks, Leonard J (2001) ‘Donald Schon ’ s Philosophy of Design and Design Education’, International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 11(Walsh 1997), pp. 37–51.

Scon’s a bit trickier. He was actually a philosopher before he moved to observation of design (on train so will dig out a great paper on him later). He does (IMHO) have his own voice in philosophy so I wouldn’t like to say. I suspect it is but with a Schon-type twist. Will have a think about that one (tunnel approaches)

“Now here is the challenge: In its long history, design practice has done a marvellous job of inventing the practical skills for drawing objects, from architectural drawing, mechanic blueprints, scale models, prototyping etc. But what has always been missing from those marvellous drawings (designs in the literal sense) are an impression of the controversies and the many contradicting stake holders that are born within with these.
[...] four hundred years after the invention of perspective drawing, three hundred years after projective geometry, fifty years after the development of CAD computer screens, we are still utterly unable to draw together, to simulate, to materialize, to approximate, to fully model to scale, what a thing in all of its complexity, is.
[..] So here is the question I wish to raise to designers: where are the visualization tools that allow the contradictory and controversial nature of matters of concern to be represented?
[..] What is needed instead are tools that capture what have always been the hidden practices of modernist innovations: objects have always been projects; matters of fact have always been matters of concern.”

Latour, B. (2008), A Cautious Prometheus? A Few Steps Toward a Philosophy of Design (with Special Attention to Peter Sloterdijk), in Jonathn Glynne Fiona Hackne & Viv Minto, ed., ‘Proceedings of the 2008 Annual International Conference of the Design History Society, Universal Publishers’ , pp. 2-10. http://www.bruno-latour.fr/node/69

Does Schön (1984) mean phenomena in the same way when he says: “In answer to the situation’s back-talk, the designer reflects-in-action on the construction of the problem, the strategies of action, or the model of the phenomena, which have been implicit in his moves”

Bateson, G. (1970), ‘Form, Substance, and Difference (Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture 1970)’, General Semantics Bulletin 37 , 5-13. http://www.rawpaint.com/library/bateson/formsubstancedifference.html

Schön, D. A. (1984), The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action , Vol. 5126 , Basic Books .