Sketching and Gesturing for New Ideas in Collaborative Design

Abstract

In searching for practices that feed creativity, we compared sketching—an acknowledged design practice that facilitates creativity—with gesturing, which shares many of the features important for ideation by sketching. Analyzing two higher education textile design projects, we found that sketching and gesturing fulfilled differing epistemic roles, although there were some parallels. We suggest that both sketching and gesturing should be treated as epistemic practices that extend beyond easing communication to eliciting new ideas.