Digital Environments for Early Design: Form-Making versus Form-Finding

Design ideas, like scientific theories, are falsifiable hypotheses subject to testing and experimentation and ? if need be ? replacement by newer ideas or theories. Design ideas also are known through distributed cognition, in which a mental construct and an external representation complement each other. Representations may be categorized along the axes 2D-3D and Analog-Digital, plus a proposed third axis from Form-Making to Form-Finding. In Form-Making, the mental construct component (of distributed cognition) arises before the representation. In Form-Finding, representation arises before the mental construct. All media of representation have different affordances. Certain media and representations afford Form-Making more so than Form-Finding, and vice versa. Design educators, students and practitioners will benefit from conscious, systematic choice of media and methods that afford an appropriate range of Form-Making and Form-Finding behaviour when proposing and testing design ideas