Role of Visual Emergence in Collaborative Design

Shapes play an important role in at least three domains. Drawn shapes are used to represent ideas, concepts, and possible physical worlds. Perceived shapes are the way we begin to understand the world our visual sense brings to us (Marr, 1982). Computer generated shapes play a critical role in computer-aided design systems and in many areas of artificial intelligence generally. Drawn shapes specifically play a dominant role in various design domains and particularly in architectural, engineering and industrial design where they are used not simply as the representation of an idea but also as a representation open to reinterpretation. In the conceptual and creative aspects of designing this reinterpretation of what has been drawn appears to play a critical role in the design process (Schön, 1983). It provides opportunities for designers to conceptualise what has been drawn differently from what was intended when it was drawn. This process of restructuring and reinterpreting an existing drawing can be said to result in the recognition of a shape that is present but unrecognised or implicit in the initial drawn shape. The shape that is made explicit in this way can be regarded as an emergent shape and the process of reinterpretation and restructuring forms the basis of emergence.