The Language of Design: Theory and Computation

“The Language of Design” articulates the theory that there is a language of design. Drawing upon insights from computational language processing, the language of design is modeled computationally through latent semantic analysis (LSA), lexical chain analysis (LCA), and sentiment analysis (SA). The statistical co-occurrence of semantics (LSA), semantic relations (LCA), and semantic modifiers (SA) in design text is used to illustrate how the reality producing effect of language is itself an enactment of design, allowing a new understanding of the connections between creative behaviors. The computation of the language of design makes it possible to make direct measurements of creative behaviors which are distributed across social spaces and mediated through language. The book demonstrates how machine understanding of design texts based on computation over the language of design yields practical applications for design management.