Unfuzzing Design: How progress is made towards unknown goals

The topic of this dissertation is design processes and how progress can be made in explorative processes, where the ends and the means are unknown. The starting point of such processes is under-determined tasks - tasks characterised by missing or vague informations. Such tasks are poorly understood in current design theory, yeat they are the prerequisite for all creativity, since missing or vague information is what makes room for something new to be created. Designers confront this kind of task every day but are often unable to describe what they actually do. Strengthened knowledge about explorative design processes can support design practice, valdidate the design profession, consolidate design-driven approaches to development outside the field of design, and furthermore serve as a foundation for the general understanding of applied creativity - not as a mental process, but as the actual creation that takes place when action is applied to material.
Likewise, this dissertation lays out the theoretical knowledge foundation for design and the concepts by which we can describe and understand design processes. The field of design theory is characterised by a number of conflicts and ambiguities. I propose a design theoretical perspective that contributes to a unifying reconciliation of these issues.