The relation of visual thinking and sketching in design creativity

Design is fundementally a problem-solving act. So solving the ill-defined, complex problems of design requires creativity. Therefore the designer should be able to approach the problem from different perspectives, discover what is different, and think differently. The design discipline, inevitably includes visuals and visual thinking, since the end product is commonly a visual entity. In order to design something that does not yet exist, the designer imagines, creates mental images, and thinks through these images. Visual thinking provides a unique cognitive process to complex design problems. In addition to the conscious processes of visual thinking, unconscious processes also enable the production of creative solutions; in particular, the unconscious processes of visual thinking contribute to the emergence of creative ideas by making connections much faster than active thinking. However, the evanescent nature of mental imeges that emerge in this process requires the images to be externalized before they are lost. While the visual thinking process can benefit from different visual tools to record ideas, the sketch can stand out with its unique features. Sketching provides a flexible environment for expressing and evaluating mental images and ideas before they fly away. Sketch, with its free, creative and flexible nature, offers visual thinking an environment in which it can work freely while also providing visual thinking with visual data to play with. In this study, which is handled within this framework, the characteristics of visual thinking and sketching processes, which possess values that cannot be overlooked in design in general and space design in particular, and the relationship between these processes are examined, and the contribution of the obtained data to creativity in design is evaluated in an integrated manner.