Understanding Design Practice, A Case of Turkey How Really We Employ Digital Tools for Everyday Designing?

Abstract

With the proliferation of the use of information technologies in design activity, digital tools and techniques become determinant factors. The digital design processes and approaches that are always considered as complex activities are evolved. In this context, the role of the designer should be questioned. Thus, who is the designer today? What would be the impact of digital tools on design practice? How do the limits of the technology impact the ways designers think, understand and communicate the design ideas? How are different digital tools perceived in performing the complex design activity? In order to discuss the above issues, a comprehensive survey is conducted. In the paper, the result of the survey will be presented. We will also discuss the findings and give some insights of the use of digital tools in the design practice in Turkey. We conclude how the complexity levels of design activity have a considerable importance in the employment of the digital design tools. Different methods enable to reach higher or lower levels of complexities in design discipline are also discusses. Instead of representing a work of architecture in traditional ways, employing computing and digital tools in the design process might have a significant role in creating new kinds of built environments.