Getting Started - Cognition Issues

In design education, as most disciplines, the challenge is often not the end result but the learning process involved in gaining knowledge considered arcane but essential to developing a system for creativity.


Learning to draw is arguably the single most difficult skill designers must master. Sometimes referred to as the 'language of design', drawing is how designers communicate to the client, to other designers, and to themselves in the process of problem solving, creation, and refinement. To properly visualize a concept, perspective drawing skills are necessary to translate an idea in the mind to a two dimensional image that "looks right".


In 1956, Jay Doblin published a treatise on design perspective systems focusing on product visualization. His two-point 30-60 degree layout shown below in print (Fig.1) and in example (fig.2) may require a large flat surface (e.g., drafting table) to properly complete. Although considered obsolete, this system helps the designer understand the structure of vanishing points and perspective - located off the page for the observer but very much considered by the designer in the visualization process. The advantage of this system is that the designer understands the logic of perspective systems and automatically creates a grid for repeated use.



Fig.1 - Doblin, J., 1956. Perspective - a new system for designers. p.24

 

Doblin's perspective system allows the designer to construct an indexed grid for any unit of measurement to draw an accurate, dimensional, 2D representation of a concept.



Fig.2 - Cube in perspective.

 
Others have developed instructional systems using established perspective grids that may be used as underlays in the drawing process (Fig.3). Dr. Noel Mayo, at the Ohio State University, has used this system successfully not just in professional practice but also in helping students overcome the fear associated with most drawing exercises.





Fig.3 - Mayo, N. and Feracho, T., 2002.

  

The difficulty of learning perspective drawing is that little of the process is intuitive. Additionally, the designer must acquire the skill to evaluate whether the drawing "looks right" since all perspective systems have some distortion built in as approximations of reality. Professional designers are required to present images that look real - if the perspective is incorrect, the observer or client may misinterpret the concept.

Conversely, learning 3D computer visualization software is neither intuitive nor simple. The digital modeling and rendering systems are both extraordinarily capable and complex at the same time. They offer tools to visualize forms and images in a myriad of variations while preparing electronic files that may be used for tooling in manufacturing. Designers now have control over subtleties of form in production parts that were not available 20 years ago.




Fig.4 - Screen capture of Maya window.

 
Maya, design software offered by Autodesk, represents a gold-standard in visualization capability that extends from industrial design to entertainment design and animation. It is so powerful that many designers know and use only a portion of the total package.


With the capability, however, comes daunting complexity. Visualization tools and controls not only construct surfaces and images using methods and protocol foreign to building methods used in real life, they are governed by new vocabulary and language (Fig.4).





Fig.5 - Close up of Maya window.

 Sets of menu systems, macros, and iconography must be searched, investigated, experimented with, and learned largely by regular use to begin a development system for computer visualization (Fig.5). Multiple menus may perform similar if redundant tasks offering different ways to do the same thing while adding complexity to system understanding.


Currently, scientific literature is more complete documenting the creative cognition associated with drawing versus computer visualization. Future studies may show parity in the two processes.


Drawing and computer processes both require different thinking to translate ideas to 2D images. I'll explore those protocols in more detail next.