business managers often wonder what designers think and do in their “black box” offices. in most cases management conceives the design process as “creative” which is similar to “ad-hoc” or “chaotic” in their wording.
in the current “journal of design research” published at the delft university, the netherlands claudia eckert, and martin stacey published an interesting article: “sources of inspiration in industrial practice. the case of knitwear design”.
here is an excerpt: “Drawing ideas from previous designs and other sources of inspiration is a universal part of all human designing, but the forms that adaptation takes, and the ways it is conceptualised both differ between industries. This paper describes how sources of inspiration are used in commercial knitwear design. …”
