The Combinator: A Computer-Based Tool for Idea Generation

Idea generation is important in design, but coming up with new and creative ideas is often challenging. The paper presents a computer-based tool named the Combinator for assisting designers to generate creative ideas. The tool is capable to generate combinational ideas based on combinational creativity theory. The Combinator has been indicated to be beneficial in helping designers generate useful and creative ideas through a case study. The result indicates that the Combinator can increase better ideas occurrence, improve design success rate, expand design space, and enhance design space exploration.

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