The Logic of Design Process: Invention and Discovery in the Light of the Semiotics of Charles S. Peirce

What is the logic of design process? Departing from this question, Tiago da Costa e Silva investigates the characteristic feature of every projective activity, for instance, in architecture, design, engineering design, and in the arts. In opposition to predominant views that understand design processes as mechanical and deterministic, this study, with the help of the semiotics of Charles S. Peirce, characterizes design activities as continuous and serendipitous interplays of esthetic and abductive processes that define rules and manifest forms. Tiago da Costa e Silva concludes that invention and discovery, manifested in the form of processes of abduction, actively pervade every development in any given context of design process.

Tiago da Costa e Silva, born in 1978, researches design processes, semiotics, esthetics, and cultural techniques (Kulturtechniken) with special focus on form-giving processes, as well as on processes involving invention and discovery. A specialist in the field of the semiotics of Charles S. Peirce, he has been awarded the "Charles S. Peirce Young Scholar Award" for his publication on esthetic processes related to discovery. He is specialized in the fields of industrial design, visual communication, theory of communication, and semiotics as well as in theory and history of design. He is currently part of the research staff of the Cluster of Excellence Image Knowledge Gestaltung and of the Department of Cultural History and Theory (Institut für Kulturwissenschaft) at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Germany.