Communication design and computational approaches: Opportunities and criticalities in a disciplinary transformation.

The rapid pace with which the digitalization of practices, tools, media, and communication systems has influenced design processes has made it difficult to determine which of these effects can be attributed to the digital nature of contents, which to the dynamic or interactive nature of media, which to the bi-directional nature of telematic networks, and which to a methodological or cultural influence brought about by the emergence of a digital mindset. Unlike other design disciplines, communication design is impacted not only by the digital tools that have transformed its practice, but also by the introduction of computational processes and methods in the design process. In this latest “informatization” of design, it is not so much the tools or the supports that have become digital, but rather the ways in which design is conceived and conceptualized that have been intermixed with the methods of computer science. Design, which has been "computer-aided" for quite some time now, has become "computational": the elements and relationships of the design project are no longer defined "statically" in relation to specific contents and contexts of application, but rather are defined in terms of rules of application and constraints that refer to categories of contents and users. The new generations of designers, in addition to the skills related to the project, are also required to be able to conceptualize the design process in terms of subsequent abstractions, which describe its contents, representations, behaviors. This paper discusses the transformation undergoing in the discipline of communication design with regard to the introduction to computational approaches in teaching and in design practice, highlighting the necessities for such an approach and the risks related to the integration of the abstract and symbolic reasoning strategies described by the term “computational thinking” with the synthetic, abductive and transformative processes of design. While a "systemic" dimension of Communication Design has always been present in the discipline, the uncritical introduction of an abstract model of thought in the context of a design process brings the tangible risk of marginalizing the role of design elements that are particularly sensitive to abstraction, and that require specific considerations when such abstract models are applied to a specific situations. To delegate the modeling of these new "communicative machines" to technical profiles entails the loss of oversight over essential elements of the design process, entrusting to third parties the responsibility of deciding what is to be considered relevant in a communicative process. In the same way, integrating uncritically computational methods in the design process, means risking to transform Communication Design in a technical process, disconnected from its context. In discussing such issues, the paper proposes a few topics for discussion in the context of design education with the aim to raise open a debate on how to fruitfully integrate the “design thinking” and “computational thinking” methodologies, so that the algorithmic dimension of design represents an opportunity for development and not a threat to communication design specificities.