We investigate reverging - the phase between the diverging and converging steps in a creative process - in the context of a visual thinking agency. Creative facilitation literature advocates for such a phase, aimed at revisiting and rearranging ideas generated during diverging, to prepare for converging. However, in practice this step is often neglected or not performed well, resulting into a sense of increased complexity or lack of client ownership.
Two studies were used to investigate reverging in context: a preliminary study consisted of interviews and observations to better understand reverging in current visual thinking practices. The follow-up study focused on co-creating a tool to solve the problem identified in the preliminary study.
While the preliminary study revealed the need to involve clients in both diverging and reverging phases, the follow-up study resulted in the creation of the Whiteboard Canvas. The tool was tested in practice and several benefits of reverging in visual thinking practices emerged.
The tool empowers visual thinking practitioners to involve their clients more actively in reverging, resulting into a more deliberate creative process and an increased sense of client ownership.
Designers often face situations where the only way forward is through the exploration of possibilities. However, there is a critical disconnect between understanding of how designer’s think and act in such situations. We address this disconnect by proposing and testing (via protocol analysis) the cognitive co-evolution model. Our model comprises a new approach to co-evolutionary design theory by explaining both the progression of the process itself and the creation of design outputs via an interplay between metacognitive perceived uncertainty, cognition, and the external world. We thus connect explanations of how designers think with descriptions of how they act. We provide a foundation for connecting to other theories, models, and questions in design research via common links to cognition and metacognition.
Of all major change efforts within organizations, 70% fail to achieve their objectives. For a large part, this is caused by the mismatch of the strategy and the work culture of the organization that undergoes the change (Kerber & Buono, 2005). To successfully implement change in organizations, it is key to match the plans to the needs and wishes of the people within the organization and gradually guide the steps of change towards the future goal. In the business community, the popularity of creativity has increased greatly. The use of creativity techniques can target participants’ motivation, readiness for change, and acquire insights on different perspectives within an organization. This paper discusses how these benefits can improve not only a design process, but also client acquisition activities.
Purpose – This paper describes the power of using creativity techniques to improve the succession rate of planned organizational change.
Keywords – Creativity techniques, research through design, acceptance finding, client acquisition
In this paper a vision on how to teach creativity and how to assess elements of it are proposed in a case study as part of the minor Connected Creativity which is taught at the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at the Delft University of Technology. Intrinsic motivation and a ‘brave space’ are essential elements for enabling learning as well as creativity. Since the aim of the Connected Creativity course is to learn about creativity, intrinsic motivation and the brave space are further examined. Two approaches for assessing creativity in the brave space are proposed and reflected upon. One is about the ‘learning pact’ to allow students to customize the course’s learning objectives and make them more relevant for them. The other approach is reflecting upon the experiment of assessing journals on quantity only: so, how many pages are filled, instead of assessing the quality of the pages by using rubrics.
Keywords – Creativity, Assessment, Brave space, productive failure, Journaling
The 101 ‘ideas’ or rather techniques in the book are recommended by 101 experts from the field and aim to stimulate creativity in your personal search for inspiration, ideas, insights and solutions.
The book helps you to
- get more inventive on your own
- find solutions for complex problems
- let your creativity flow
- choose techniques that fit you personally
- learn more about your personal preferences for creativity and innovation.
Read more about the book or buy a copy at https://101ideeen.nl
The goal of this paper is to examine meaning as a component of creativity. We take a demand-based approach for conceptualizing meaning, and propose that it emerges from user needs instead of emerging from already existing creative solutions. Meaning is proposed as a third component of creativity, alongside novelty and usefulness. We test this proposition in a pre-study, and two empirical studies. In the pre-study, designers define creativity and provide examples of solutions that they deem creative. The results of the pre-study yield a 24-item scale for assessing creativity. Then, we conduct two empirical studies, in which we utilize the created scale for measuring creativity, and for examining the components arising thereof. In the first study, we ask creators (design engineering students) to generate ideas for one of two design briefs. Afterwards, creators were asked to rate their own creations, on the 24-item creativity scale. Here, we find a four-factor solution for creative outcomes, consisting of the dimensions novelty, usefulness, cleverness, and meaning. In the second study, we ask independent evaluators (individuals with related and relevant degrees) to assess the creators’ work on the creativity scale. Here, we find a three-factor solution for creative outcomes, consisting of the dimensions novelty, usefulness, and meaning. In both studies, meaning emerged as a separate component of creativity. Additionally, in both studies, it accounted for variance that was unaccounted for by novelty and usefulness, thereby increasing the overall explanatory power of creative solutions. These findings strongly speak of meaning as a third component of creativity.
Ideation is simultaneously one of the most investigated and most intriguing aspects of design. The reasons for this attention are partly due to its importance in design and innovation, and partly due to an array of conflicting results and explanations. In this study, we develop an integrative perspective on individual ideation by combining cognitive and process-based views via dual-process theory. We present a protocol and network analysis of 31 ideation sessions, based on novice designers working individually, revealing the emergence of eight idea archetypes and a number of process features. Based on this, we propose the Dual-Process Ideation (DPI) Model, which links idea creation and idea judgement. This explains a number of previously contradictory results and offers testable predictive power.
Building on the assumption that the physical environment can have an influence on the creativity of designers and design students in particular, the aim of this paper is to provide theoretical propositions and evidences for this relationship. We develop various propositions about the influence of physical environments on creativity, based on eight expert interviews and supported by literature. A particular focus was given to the environments of design educational institutions. We present a summary of the main insights
and visualize the developed propositions as a causal graph addressing how space influences creativity. These propositions can be regarded as a first step towards a theory of creativity-supporting learning environments and they can serve as a reference when designing or adjusting creative learning spaces.
Creativity is quintessential in design ideation, as it fuels innovation in an ever-changing world. However, designers often experience states of being stuck and fixated, either on their own solutions, on examples or on the design process. A think-aloud protocol study and interviews were conducted with 31 novice designers in order to capture their strategies to cope with fixation and other types of hindrances to creativity. The findings corroborate past research on design fixation, adding a qualitative perspective to the existing growing body of knowledge on this topic. Furthermore, the study reveals the opportunistic and sometimes unexpected strategies designers apply in order to continue ideation. This paper contributes to the understanding of the opportunistic behaviour of designers in ideation and has implications for the study of design fixation and other barriers to creativity at the methodological level.
The launch of the tenth volume of this journal (International Journal of Design Creativity and Innovation) presented an important opportunity to reflect on what has been done and, more importantly, on what is expected of the field of design creativity and innovation research in the years ahead. For this reason, we invited all current members of the Editorial and Steering Advisory Boards of IJDCI to share their expert point of view and expectations in a free style or format (but within a maximum length of words).
The question of how the physical work environment can affect creativity is gaining interest among companies and educational institutions. This paper introduces ten propositions outlining possible relationships between spatial characteristics and creative work. The propositions were developed following a grounded-theory approach based on nine expert interviews that provide insight on the topic from the perspective of different creative fields—namely, urban planning, architecture, interior design, office planning, furniture design, industrial design, design thinking, innovation, and fine arts. We focused on both educational and practice environments within the creative sector. For each proposition, we provide links to supporting literature. We present a summary of the main insights and visualize the developed propositions as a set of causal graphs. The propositions have implications for both research and practice: on the one hand, they can be regarded as the first step toward a theory of creativity-supporting work environments; on the other hand, they can serve as a reference when designing or adjusting creative workspaces.
Creativity is one of the vital 21st century skills. As the subject of a large academic and practitioner community since 1950, there are literally hundreds of books and thousands of techniques on creativity. In this book, this body of knowledge is boiled down for modern scholars and facilitators to one framework called iCPS, integrated Creative Problem Solving.
For the techniques, the book focuses on techniques for groups and details 40 essential ones. This is the main part of the book. The set of 40 covers all the techniques in the field and offers the building blocks to construct group sessions. Guidelines for organizing sessions will help the reader position the building blocks and make the design for a smooth process. The website will offer even more details and practicalities to run magic sessions and courses.