Abstract
This paper examines communication in design thinking, drawing on Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory as an alternative to the prevailing information-processing model. While design thinking is commonly framed as problem-solving, we propose that designed artefacts function as ostensive stimuli that guide users' inferential processes rather than encoding fixed meanings. The ostensive-inferential model reveals how designers communicate through intentions, where users actively infer meaning based on evidence, context, and relevance. This framework explains complex communicative phenomena, including affordances, metaphors, cross-cultural design considerations, and ethical dimensions of design practice. This perspective has significant implications for design thinking education and practice, emphasising communication competency alongside technical skills and highlighting design's ethical dimensions as a form of communication that shapes human experience across cultural contexts.
Keywords
Communication; Cognition; Relevance Theory; Design Thinking; Metaphor
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.448
Citation
Feast, L.(2025) Making Meaning Manifest: Communication and Relevance in Design Thinking, in Chang, C.-Y., and Hsu, Y. (eds.), IASDR 2025: Design Next, 02-05 December, Taiwan. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.448
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Track 5 - Design Thinking
Making Meaning Manifest: Communication and Relevance in Design Thinking
This paper examines communication in design thinking, drawing on Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory as an alternative to the prevailing information-processing model. While design thinking is commonly framed as problem-solving, we propose that designed artefacts function as ostensive stimuli that guide users' inferential processes rather than encoding fixed meanings. The ostensive-inferential model reveals how designers communicate through intentions, where users actively infer meaning based on evidence, context, and relevance. This framework explains complex communicative phenomena, including affordances, metaphors, cross-cultural design considerations, and ethical dimensions of design practice. This perspective has significant implications for design thinking education and practice, emphasising communication competency alongside technical skills and highlighting design's ethical dimensions as a form of communication that shapes human experience across cultural contexts.