Draft of Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, P. (2008). Three Orientations of Weaving Design. Teoksessa T. Tuomi-Gröhn (Ed). Reinventing Art of Everyday Making. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. (pp. 183-198) (original) (raw)

The article describes expertise in the process of professional-level weaving design. The weaving-design process was considered as a dual-space search between the visual, composition space and the technical, construction space, subject to external (environmental, contextual) and internally generated constraints. Composition space, which is seen as a domain-independent design process, consists of the organization of the visual elements and principles selected and manipulated during design process. The visual elements consist of shape design, color design, and pattern design elements. Construction space, which is seen as a domain-specific design process, consists of organization and manipulation of the technical elements and principles. The technical elements include material design, structure design (e.g., weave and density) and design of production procedures (e.g., technique, yarn floats). Technical design strongly influences textiles’ surface. The selection of the visual elements requires a search through the composition space, and the selection of technical elements requires search through the construction space. The pivotal aspect of the weaving design process is the gathering and utilization of domain-specific knowledge, in conjunction with the visual and technical characteristics of the desired textile. Given this as a starting point, the knowledge of traditional weaves, models and techniques of weaving, the study of materials and their interrelationships and the organization of visual elements then become crucial in bringing the textile into the realm of the tangible. This article depicts expertise in weaving design by examining how professionally experienced designers and advanced students of weaving design solved a professional weaving-design task. The participants were asked to solve the weaving design task while thinking aloud in two, design sessions. The data consisted of (1) verbal protocols, (2) video protocols, and (3) written and drawn material produced by the participants. The data was analyzed through qualitative content analysis and problem-behavior graphs (PBGs). The weaving design shared many prototypical characteristics of design process. The nature of weaving design indicated that the participants focused on composition design in the first and construction design in the second design session. An analysis of the relative importance of the composition, construction and constraints in the participants’ designing indicated that they followed identifiable design orientations (i.e., composition orientation, composition- construction orientation, and constraint orientation).