A concept needs progressive development. As it progresses, more details need to be designed and added. While you are doing this, you have to document what you designed in such a way that it is clear what you designed and what conceptual choices you made. Often, other people like clients, users, or other stakeholders need to be involved, and you have to communicate your concept and choices made to them. In addition, other developers are needed for their specific expertise and/or to fill in specific parts. This can already be necessary in the concept stage. Or later on, when the concept will be detailed up to the final design.

Often, the format of these kinds of representations have to meet explicit (such as technical drawings) or implicit standards (such as how a plan should look like). Experts can read these representations as if they are newspapers, but for non-experts, it is often difficult to understand what to expect. For example, imagining how a building looks like on the base of a floorplan requires training!

For those who can't read these expert documentations, you may need to develop additional representations to document and communicate your concept. Architects, for example, make 3D-sketches, computer-rendered images, or scale models in addition to floorplans and technical drawings to show the client how (parts of) the concept looks like.</>


Case Study: Future of Food exhibition

Future of Food exhibition worked mostly with (1) a large floorplan where the exhibits were mapped onto, and (2) dedicated plans for the individual exhibits.

The large floorplan was updated by using the plans of the exhibits only at Show & Share sessions, during which they discussed the progress of every team member. The floorplan remained unaltered when dealing with topics on which the team had made no decisions yet. This could be because they were in doubt or in disagreement, and a notification referring to the discussion was added. Only those choices that everyone agreed on could be seen on the map. Meanwhile, they carefully documented what choices they made. At times the management team and sponsors of the exhibition were informed of the progress. For those meetings, they produced computer-animated images to showcase the team's decisions.

For the exhibit, several rooms needed structural adaptations to enable cooking. The team had to document carefully where they wanted small kitchens so that two engineers could devise plans and calculate what the cost would be of electrical adaptations, dedicated ventilation, and so on. This was necessary for deciding whether or not such kitchens could be part of the exhibition, or whether it would become too costly.