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'Polonius: What do you read, my lord?Hamlet: Words, words, words.'–(Hamlet, Act II, Scene ii) 'In the beginning was the word ...' (John 1:1), which echoes the beginning of Genesis (1:1). But, designers would argue, "a picture is worth a thousand words". This phrase may suggest a Chinese origin, but although Chinese characters are generally referred to as ideograms, they represent ideas through association with the spoken word. My own experience of doing a PhD by thesis underlines the power of word and although the research was an ongoing verbal-visual interaction, similar to what has been described elsewhere as 'the language of design' (Schon, 1983), 'the translation problem' (Tomes, et. al., 1998), or the 'picture-word-cycle' (Dorner, 1999), a major effort was the time spent on refining the writing (process). Or, as I put it in the author's note: Doing a PhD by thesis is essentially a slow and deliberate process of thinking and writing. And writing is continuance. And writing is writing, not preparing to write. Indeed writing is largely rewriting, and 'to speak of "writing up" the results of research is to betray a total misunderstanding of how scholars work' (Watson 1987:9). Arguably, computer writing has not changed the principles of writing well: 'That will still require plain old hard thinkingˇ¦ and the plain old tools of the English language (Zinsser, 2006: xii-xiii). Words, then, are fundamental not just to communication but to the process of thought itself, although this observation may be overlooked or underestimated in design ideation, as my case study findings suggest (Jonson, 2005). BJ Dorner, D (1999) Approaching design thinking research. Design Studies Vol 20 No 5 pp 407-415 Jonson, B (2005) Design Ideation: the conceptual sketch in the digital age. Design Studies Vol 26 No 6 pp 613-624 Schon, D (1983) The Reflective Practitioner. London: Temple-Smith Tomes, A, Oates, C and Armstrong, P (1998) Talking design: negotiating the verbal-visual translation. Design Studies Vol 19 No 2 pp 127-142 Watson, G (1987) Writing a Thesis: A Guide to Long Essays and Dissertations. London: Longman Zinsser, W (2006) On writing well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction. New York: Collins ----------------------------------------------------------------- PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design -----------------------------------------------------------------