To make is to grasp

Making plays an important role in the design process, but the focus of design is shifting towards designing for interaction and systems. Following the changing nature of design the role of making is also under change and new tools are available. The different roles of making can be captured in a framework distinguishing ‘making for exploration (inspiration/elaboration)’ and ‘making for validation’. The new tools accelerate the design process by accelerating the making and promise to unlock new solution domains in design but seem to deteriorate the quality of design. We argue that particularly the ‘making for exploration (elaboration)’ role of making is lost in the use of the new tools as they enforce more definition than is wise in the early phases of the design process promoting sketches, unfinished thoughts, to design proposals. We conclude that (1) a new craftsmanship of design is needed where the old ways of doing design meet the new ways, (2) a tool should remain a tool not become the means in itself, and (3) we need to have a experiential basis in the physical to shape the physical.