Assessment of the Relationships Among Design Methods, Design Activities, and Creativity

This paper presents an experimental study that was conducted to compare the results obtained from using different design methods (brainstorming (BR), functional analysis (FA), and SCAMPER) in design processes. The objectives of this work are twofold. The first was to determine whether there are any differences in the length of time devoted to the different types of activities that are carried out in the design process, depending on the method that is employed; in other words, whether the design methods that are used make a difference in the profile of time spent across the design activities. The second objective was to analyze whether there is any kind of relationship between the time spent on design process activities and the degree of creativity in the solutions that are obtained. Creativity evaluation has been done by means of the degree of novelty and the level of resolution of the designed solutions using creative product semantic scale (CPSS) questionnaire. The results show that there are significant differences between the amounts of time devoted to activities related to understanding the problem and the typology of the design method, intuitive or logical, that are used. While the amount of time spent on analyzing the problem is very small in intuitive methods, such as brainstorming and SCAMPER (around 8-9% of the time), with logical methods like functional analysis practically half the time is devoted to analyzing the problem. Also, it has been found that the amount of time spent in each design phase has an influence on the results in terms of creativity, but results are not enough strong to define in which measure are they affected. This paper offers new data and results on the distinct benefits to be obtained from applying design methods. DOI: 10.1115/1.4007362]

[1]  J. Christopher Jones,et al.  Design methods: Seeds of human futures , 1970 .

[2]  Amaresh Chakrabarti,et al.  The significance of co-evolving requirements and solutions in the design process , 1997 .

[3]  Herbert Birkhofer,et al.  Why Methods Don't Work and How to Get them to Work , 2002 .

[4]  A. Chakrabarti,et al.  TOWARDS A MEASURE FOR ASSESSING CREATIVE INFLUENCES OF A CREATIVITY TECHNIQUE , 2003 .

[5]  Vicente Chulvi Ramos,et al.  MEDIDA DE LA CREATIVIDAD EN PRODUCTOS: METRICAS Y OBJETIVIDAD , 2012 .

[6]  Arthur B. VanGundy,et al.  Techniques of structured problem solving , 1981 .

[7]  A. C. Valkenburg.  The reflective practice in product design teams , 2000 .

[8]  Kurt Y. Michael.  The Effect of a Computer Simulation Activity versus a Hands-on Activity on Product Creativity in Technology Education , 2001 .

[9]  P. Paulus,et al.  Idea Generation in Groups : A Basis for Creativity in Organizations , 1994 .

[10]  Graham Thompson,et al.  A review of creativity principles applied to engineering design , 1999 .

[11]  Arthur B. Markman,et al.  An Experimental Study of Group Idea Generation Techniques: Understanding the Roles of Idea Representation and Viewing Methods , 2011 .

[12]  Nigel Cross,et al.  Analysing design activity , 1996 .

[13]  Remko van der Lugt,et al.  Developing a graphic tool for creative problem solving in design groups , 2000 .

[14]  Mª Carmen González Cruz,et al.  MEASURE OF PRODUCT CREATIVITY: METRICS AND OBJECTIVITY , 2012 .

[15]  Cynthia J. Atman,et al.  Comparing freshman and senior engineering design processes: an in-depth follow-up study , 2005 .

[16]  Karl T. Ulrich,et al.  Product Design and Development , 1995 .

[17]  Donald A. Schön.  The reflective practitioner : how professionals think in action , 1986 .

[18]  J. D. H. Freeman.  Applied categorical data analysis , 1987 .

[19]  Susan P. Besemer,et al.  The development, reliability, and validity of the revised creative product semantic scale , 1989 .

[20]  G. Altshuller.  Creativity as an exact science : the theory of the solution of inventive problems , 1984 .

[21]  E. Salas,et al.  Productivity loss in brainstorming groups: A meta-analytic integration. , 1991 .

[22]  Rosario Vidal,et al.  Effectiveness of the means of expression in creative problem-solving in design groups , 2004 .

[23]  Steven M. Smith,et al.  Metrics for measuring ideation effectiveness , 2003 .

[24]  A. Osborn.  Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Thinking , 1953 .

[25]  Bob Eberle.  Scamper: Games for Imagination Development , 1984 .

[26]  Maria C. Yang,et al.  Observations on concept generation and sketching in engineering design , 2009 .

[27]  Tom Ritchey,et al.  Fritz Zwicky, Morphologie and Policy Analysis , 1998 .

[28]  Kurt Y. Michael,et al.  A comparison of students' product creativity using a computer simulation activity versus a hands-on activity in technology education , 2000 .

[29]  W. Gordon.  Synectics: The Development of Creative Capacity , 1961 .

[30]  Amaresh Chakrabarti,et al.  Improving requirement satisfaction ability of the designer , 2001 .

[31]  Tony Buzan,et al.  El libro de los mapas mentales: cómo utilizar al máximo las capacidades de la mente , 1996 .

[32]  John S. Gero,et al.  An approach to the analysis of design protocols , 1998 .

[33]  Belinda López-Mesa,et al.  Effects of additional stimuli on idea-finding in design teams , 2011 .

[34]  Willemien Visser,et al.  Design: One, but in different forms , 2007, ArXiv.

[35]  David G. Ullman,et al.  The Mechanical Design Process , 1992 .

[36]  David H. Cropley,et al.  Fostering Creativity: A Diagnostic Approach for Higher Education and Organizations , 2009 .

[37]  James M. Higgins.  101 Creative Problem Solving Techniques: The Handbook of New Ideas for Business , 1994 .

[38]  N. F. M. Roozenburg,et al.  Product design: Fundamentals and methods , 1996 .