Handling Knowledge : Three perspectives on embodied creation of knowledge in collaborative design

My research takes three embodied perspectives on collaborative design. In this research, collaborative design represents a specific type of knowledge creation oriented toward artefact creation, and a context for pedagogical practices in higher education. The three perspectives grew out of a continuum of research on the features and challenges of learning collaborative design in higher education, a multidisciplinary research project on forms of embodiment in design, and four identified gaps in the research literature. The first of the three perspectives is sketching, an acknowledged discipline-specific practice in design. The second perspective is gesturing. Gesturing is frequently characterised as spontaneous communicative behaviour, as opposed to practice. The third perspective entails a practice not always included in design discourses: material explorations that bridge designing and making. Despite their obvious differences, not to mention different treatments that these perspectives have received from design researchers, a common grounding feature emerges when they are examined through the lens of embodiment: they are all body-based channels through which individuals’ personal knowledge and experiences diffuse in two directions. To emphasise that they utilise capabilities shaped and developed by individuals’ developmental and experiential histories, that they have an embodied base, I coin them embodied resources. When these embodied resources provide significant input and advance designing, they have an epistemically meaningful role in the process. This is what I call embodied creation of knowledge. The theoretical part of my research consolidates prior key results on sketching, gestures and material explorations as well as ideation in design, and complements these with an extensive display of gesture research approaches and results. Together, they highlight the identified mechanisms behind idea generation and how the use of embodied resources could facilitate designing. In turn, this facilitation could yield embodied creation of knowledge, where the knowledge is relevant at least at the local level, for that particular design task. Juxtapositioning the three perspectives deepen our understanding of their current uses and their possibilities for embodied creation of knowledge in the context of collaborative design in higher education. Accordingly, my three main research questions focus on the epistemic role of sketching and gesturing in collaborative designing and the characteristics of collaborative creation of material knowledge through exploration. Identifying the epistemic roles, i.e. the characteristic uses that bring significant input and advance designing, required analysis of the collaborative processes. For the empirical part of my research, process data from two collaborative design and make projects in higher education were collected. The primary data from designing was in video format. The data from making included textual diary entries with attached photographs. To tackle the well-known challenges introduced by transcribing, i.e. producing linguistic translations to describe the use of embodied resources, I developed a video-based qualitative content analysis method. This method permitted me to identify and examine designrelevant meanings fed by embodied resources. It was a rigorous micro-level analysis method that rendered not only the meaning but also the frequency of parallel channels of communication and thinking. According to my research results, sketching was especially strong for studying complicated structures that required precision and memory. Even if the uses for sketching were not completely related to structures, gestures had more versatile uses. Gestures were preferred for dynamic, spatio-motoric aspects, haptic meanings and embodied experiences, but were also used for less complicated structures. Research on material explorations showed that explorations were frequently used but the created material knowledge was treated as a vehicle to address challenges in making rather than a source of inspiration. My research has several implications for design and gesture research. The active and rich use of embodied resources can turn collaborative designing into the drafting of a series of two-, threeand/or our-dimensional depictions. It is central for designing that in these depictions, potentially essential features of the solution and the problem emerge as the indigenous characters of each resource guide and restrict the production of the depictions. Equally important is that the drafting/production of the depictions implicitly tests those emergent features visually, spatio-motorically and/or kinaesthetically. Moreover, the use of the embodied resources along with the linguistic resources is related to patterns of collaboration and immediacy of sharing, and thus the unfolding of the working processes and collaborative creativity. When combined with active perception, they can turn interaction into inspiraction, i.e. interaction that sparks inspiration in oneself and in others. To conclude, the epistemic role of the studied resources is not necessarily limited to communication and thinking, but could entail the ability to elicit more ideas. This yields to a new approach for gesture research; gestures in the context of creative processes.