Interpreting digital references. The contribution of “designerly knowledge” in the connection between percepts and concepts

In the digital age, the democratisation of a series of actions inherent to data management has, in fact, allowed digitisation to be interpreted as an operation to extend and relieve human memory (cognitive offloading, Storm et al., 2016). In the design field, the availability of data contained in the web in a wide but fragmented way would lead to the hypothesis of the advancement of a type of knowledge (and memory) characterised mainly by a spontaneous and disordered growth of information and non-linear narratives (Sendra & Sennet, 2022), as well as a different way of searching and using references in the project field. Referring to this background, with this paper, we aim to investigate the connection between percepts and concepts (Horn, 1998) relating to the use of digital storage in the disciplinary context of Design, integrating the observation of the phenomenon with multidisciplinary points of view. More specifically, it is intended to compose a critical framework within which to understand the characteristics of “designerly knowledge” (Dorst & Lawson, 2009) for the collection and archiving of digital visual material for design use, supporting the discussion through integration with various critical contributions from complexity science, psycholinguistics and perception studies. The aim here is to propose some models of interpretation on the subject that help to understand the organising and systemic modalities of Design for the management of uncertainty as a permanent condition of “contemporary data” (Sendra & Sennet, 2022). In particular, the variety of authors cited contributes to composing the picture that is intended to be returned on the subject of the organisation of digital references for the design of complex content.