Diagramming design: visualizing user interactions with colour palettes

This is a partly practical, partly theoretical paper regarding the uses and potential uses of capturing and visualising digital design moves. The paper-based sketch consists of ambiguous marks that evidence shifts in creative thinking over time. When the artist or designer uses digital technologies to design, only final polished digital marks remain at the end of a session. The processes by which the final design occurred are invisible. This paper presents visualizations of task-based and highly constrained design activities such as colour selection to indicate what can be learned by visualizing mechanical design processes. By visualizing how student designers move across two different designs of colour palette both artistically and empirically interesting results are found. Visualizing design moves enables the design researcher to discover patterns within design behaviour, enables the usability researcher to test interface usage, and enables the designer to create images with aesthetic potential through process alone.