Theoretical Foundations of Design Thinking. Part III: Robert H. McKim’s Visual Thinking Theories

With his treatise “Experiences in Visual Thinking” first published in 1972, McKim delivers a milestone in the development of design thinking theory and practice. Building on creative thinking theories advanced by John E. Arnold before, McKim develops a comprehensive framework of creativity as embodied and embedded cognition. He elaborates on the role of the whole body for creative performance. In particular, he describes productive thinking as occurring during interactions with the world, where he specifically emphasizes benefits of prototyping activities. He sets forth a theory of representation systems, based on human sensory modalities (vision, hearing, touch etc.) and cognitive processing systems (such as language or mathematical processing). In each representation system, productive thinking is said to thrive on the triple activity of “perceive-think-act,” which McKim elaborates for the case of visual thinking in terms of “seeing-imagining-idea sketching.” To foster creative breakthroughs, a sophisticated use of multiple and varying representation systems is recommended. Overall, McKim covers in detail topics such as muscle tonus, emotion, attention, memory, perception, language, sleep and consciousness in relation to creativity. He also translates creativity theories into a creativity curriculum where opportunities for students to gain immersive experiences are considered at least as important as lecture inputs. Furthermore, McKim discusses creativity as embedded in the world and provides comprehensive recommendations for the design of places to facilitate creative work. Moreover, he coins the concept of “ambidextrous thinking,” which is the immediate precursor to the concept of “design thinking” in Stanford’s innovation education for engineers.