Design: Analogue, Digital, and Somewhere in Between

The problem considered in this paper is: "In what way do we design?" This paper concentrates on the early creative stages of the design process during which the designer gradually gathers the information about the problem, applying appropriate rules, tools and media. If the tools are chosen as a starting point of consideration, designing may be analysed as manual or digital. If we chose the medium - design may be considered as physical or virtual. The main thesis of this paper is that designing proceeds somewhere in between. "Somewhere in between" means the space where manual, digital, virtual are mixing, overlapping, and transforming one into the other. As a case study the process of designing of blurred function object is presented. In this experimental design studio we paid particular attention to the design process and we searched for the answer to the following questions: how to find an idea (what tools/media are helpful), how to express, fix and transform that idea? In the paper the examples of students' work will be presented and discussed.