Diagrams as Heuristic Tools. A Semiotic Investigation to Provide a Theoretical Model for the Design of Diagrams

Abstract

The article aims to demonstrate the importance of the diagrammatic image as an essential element of the inferential process: a necessary tool for us to interpret and to communicate the intelligible. Accordingly, it will be discussed how diagrams privilege and display pertinences of the object they stand for, consequently affecting our interpretation and what we can fathom. As a fundamental graphic-sign for reasoning and discovery, the diagram will be described in accordance with a theoretical model, to provide the visual designer with a useful instrument to monitor and probe their designs. In this view it will also emerge how the designer’s work resembles that of the scientist, both with the intention to innovate models to describe an object.

Keywords

• diagrams
• design
• semiotic
• k-interpretant
• analogy
• visualizing
• communication