So external representations are more definite than internal ones—and yet, in another sense, they are also more usefully ambiguous. When a representation remains inside our heads, there’s no mystery about what it signifies; it’s our thought, and so “there can be neither doubt nor ambiguity about what is intended,” notes Daniel Reisberg. Once we’ve placed it on the page, however, we can riff on it, play with it, take it in new directions; it can almost seem as if we ourselves didn’t make it. And indeed, researchers who have observed artists, architects, and designers as they create report that
...more
