The development of representations is crucial for co-creation and designing. The word design stems from the Latin word designare, composed of  'de' (out)  + 'signare' (to mark). This shows that design as an activity is about marking out something to designate it. Some researchers even see “design as a construction of representations” (Visser 2006, 2010), which is an ongoing process to generate, transform and evaluate representations to create something new.  

Thus, representations are central in the design practice, but not any representation will do for advancing an idea into a concept or a final design. In order to co-create or reflect, you need to develop representations that represent what is on your mind and can be understood by others. The purpose of these representations vary, and consequently, the representation itself varies. Representations can be used to develop ideas, like sketching helps you to explore and reflect on ideas. But representations serve also serve goals beyond development goals. These goals, being to document the concept, to sell it, or to test it, will be discussed on the following pages.

Representations can resemble the real world or they can be quite abstract. Fidelity is the degree to which a representation corresponds to the real world. A low fidelity representation is abstract, or sketchy; whereas high fidelity representations depict something as if it is reality. Whereas ideas often can be represented by means of an iconic sketch, a concept requires to show much more detail in order to be able to evaluate design choices. Consequently, the fidelity of representations that depict the concept is often high. More importantly, often a range of representations is needed to describe and present a concept.

What representations produce and show, is highly dependent on the goal you have in mind. We discuss three goals: documenting, selling, and testing.

Three fidelity levels of the same app (Click to enlarge the figure)

Case Study: Future of Food exhibition

The concept of the exhibit was developed and shown by means of several representations that together enabled the team to develop the concept. It also allowed them to properly communicate with management and stakeholders so that everyone knew what could be expected, when, and at what cost.

• A dummy brochure
  Enabled to communicate the essence of the exhibition and included few key visuals, excellent written copy, and catchy headlines. It not only shows what to expect in an inspiring way but also served to develop the website and other communication means, well ahead of time of opening.
  
  
• A floorplan + renders
  The floorplan enabled to present, discuss and change the overall layout of the exhibit in the museum. For those less trained in reading technical drawings, designers produced some computer-rendered images at eye-level of strategic locations, to offer a good picture of what to expect. Early hand-drawn sketches of similar viewpoints proved to be confusing.
  
  
• A scale model
  For one of the key exhibits that was expected to attract many visitors ('Tasting insects'), a 1:5 scale model was made. It helped to get a proper understanding of the look and feel of the exhibit, and also to develop a routing for intelligent crowd management. 
  
  
• A planning wall
  Planning the exhibition was difficult, as the topic of the exhibition (food) was unusual for the developers and posed several planning challenges, like the technicalities that allow for cooking in the museum. The regular spreadsheet for planning activities was cumbersome, so the team decided to dedicate a wall in one of the offices to map out all activities on post-its, enabling to adapt the order of activities swiftly. 
  
  
• Budget estimation
  The project leader spent considerable time developing a highly visual report with pie-charts and different purchasing options. This gave them a good insight into the budget needed to execute the project, and, more importantly, the cost impact of specific choices. As such, they offered some choice to the management which were represented by means of a concise project report.
  
  

---

References

• Visser, W. (2006). The cognitive artifacts of designing. CRC Press. 

• Visser, W. (2010). Design as construction of representations. Art + Design & Psychology (2), pp.29-43.