Young Children Using Drawing for Designing

Part of this text is a a precis of the paper I delivered at the Design and Technology International Millenium Conference 2000 in April 2000. The full text is published in the conference proceedings, available from DATA, Wellesborough House, Walton Road, Wellesborough, Warwickshire, CV35 9JB. The Container / Journey Metaphor for Design Drawing and its related diagram is copyright to me. It is the subject of my paper at DATA 2001 Conference in July.

The Metaphor of Designing

The ability to use drawing as a design tool hinges on:
- seeing the analogy between the designing medium and the making medium;
- being able to transfer seamlessly from one to the other;
- being able to manipulate one symbol system to develop ideas about something to be created in another.

Lakoff and Johnson’s book "Metaphors We Live By" (1980) explains how every concept we have is built on previous concepts and that we extrapolate from known to unknown, not by logic, but by metaphor. Even scientists do this - all new knowledge is explained in metaphors from the old, which is betrayed even in the terminology. Hence we have "black hole", and Rutherford’s description of the atom as a mini solar system.

Lakoff and Johnson also explain how our use of different metaphors affect the way we see things: love is a "many splendoured thing" or the "start of a life sentence". It is this utilisation of metaphor, so much part of everyday life that it passes unnoticed, that develops our understanding and perceptions. Poets are the masters of the technique.

One of Lakoff and Johnson's examples has direct application to design drawing. I have adopted this as my model for design drawing, both to understand what is happening and to explain the process to children.

It is this double metaphorical use of drawing for designing that young children have yet to grasp. They see a drawing as a container for their representation of reality (be it past, present or future). What they have yet to understand is that this container can be taken on a journey, and changed and modified on the way. They may fill the paper with more and more content, but they have not covered more ground. The drawing has not travelled any distance; it has remained the same idea as when they first put pencil to paper.

It is when children begin to realise that drawing is not just a product, but can also be a process, and that they can go on an intellectual journey with it and through it, that they begin to use it for developing ideas and, therefore, as a genuine design tool. Now they are using the drawing (product) as part of an interactive drawing process, in which each successive drawing is another staging post along the journey towards solving the design problem.

Drawing as a Container:	Drawing as a Journey:

The series of three lessons based on Flat Stanley play on this metaphor. Stan goes on a journey in his envelope; the children’s ideas go on a journey through their drawings.

Knowing how + knowing that = strategy knowledge

Ryle (1949) divided knowledge into knowing how (skills) and knowing that (facts). However, factual information about processes affects the knowing how to approach a task. There seem to be inseparably woven threads combining knowing how and knowing that in the developing mind. It is impossible to say which comes first, how they might be separated or how they interact.

The link between the two, particularly in regard to children’s knowledge about designing, is what I would call strategy knowledge - knowing a particular procedure will work best in the given circumstances. The procedure itself might be classed as "know how" but "know that" is needed to apply it. Children can be taught certain procedures (labelled diagrams, for example) at quite a young age. However, they do not access this procedural knowledge because they do not see its applicability to problem solving.

For drawing and designing, it is necessary to see that:

Bruner (1962) refers to Weldon’s distinction between difficulties, puzzles and problems. A problem is solved or a discovery made when we impose a puzzle form on a difficulty, to convert it into one with which we can deal. Discovery consists of knowing how to impose a workable "puzzle form" on various difficulties.

Knowing that, by drawing it, a problem can be solved, is an imposition of a known puzzle form in Weldon’s sense. However, the realisation that the task is bigger or more complex than can be visualised mentally, and that external support is needed, whether from a drawing, a list or whatever, involves a level of self-awareness or metacognition which young children lack.

Children are unaware of the limits of their visualisation skills. They think they have the answer and start to make something, leave it half done because it doesn't work or change it completely at a whim. By teaching children to objectify and record their mental images, visualise onto paper, we are teaching methodological efficiency for use in a whole range of contexts.

The series of three lessons based on Flat Stanley teach this strategy knowledge. The container / journey metaphor is explicitly taught; the children are shown how to exploit it.