The effects of the alternate writing and sketching brainstorming method on the creativity of undergraduate industrial design students in Taiwan

Abstract Creativity, one of the important abilities of industrial designers, can help with designing and realizing innovative products. Today, industrial designs require group collaboration as well. To stimulate group creativity effectively is an important issue in promoting the innovation of products. Both the 635 brainstorming method and the C-Sketch method are popular team-based divergent thinking techniques. The former uses words while the latter uses pictures as a way to stimulate group creativity. This study fuses the 635 brainstorming method and the C-Sketch method by alternatingly passing pictures and words in the divergent thinking phase to help group designers with stimulating and integrating their ideas from different aspects for developing innovative products. To help industrial designer groups collaborating to design innovative products, this study develops an online collaborative design system that could support several divergent thinking methods, including the hybrid technique proposed in this study. To evaluate the feasibility of this hybrid technique, this study conducts two experiments. For the results in the first experiment, using the proposed method, the originality and the elaboration of group creativity score significantly higher than that using the 635 brainstorming method, but the fluency and the flexibility do not. In the second experiment, using the proposed method, the originality and the elaboration of group creativity score significantly higher than that using the C-Sketch method, but the flexibility does not. Nevertheless, the C-Sketch method performs significantly better in the fluency of group creativity than that of the proposed method. The proposed method scores significantly higher than the 635 brainstorming method and the C-Sketch method do in improving designers’ creative thinking. Nevertheless, the measurements of the performances on the final products yield no significant differences between the proposed method and the 635 brainstorming method or the C-Sketch method.

[1]  John Baer,et al.  Divergent thinking is not a general trait: A multidomain training experiment , 1994 .

[2]  Susan R. Fussell,et al.  Idea expander: supporting group brainstorming with conversationally triggered visual thinking stimuli , 2010, CSCW '10.

[3]  Petra Badke-Schaub,et al.  What inspires designers? Preferences on inspirational approaches during idea generation , 2014 .

[4]  Claudia Eckert,et al.  REFERENCES TO PAST DESIGNS , 2005 .

[5]  J. Shah,et al.  Collaborative Sketching (C-Sketch)--An Idea Generation Technique for Engineering Design. , 2001 .

[6]  J. Tidd,et al.  Innovation and Entrepreneurship , 2007 .

[7]  John S. Gero,et al.  Design and other types of fixation , 1996 .

[8]  Michael Diehl,et al.  Productivity loss in idea-generating groups: Tracking down the blocking effect. , 1991 .

[9]  R. B. Woodruff,et al.  Customer value: The next source for competitive advantage , 1997 .

[10]  Bryan Lawson,et al.  Computers, words and pictures , 1997 .

[11]  Niki Panteli,et al.  Factors Influencing Creativity in Virtual Design Teams: An Interplay between Technology, Teams and Individuals , 2013 .

[12]  Steven M. Smith,et al.  Constraining effects of examples in a creative generation task , 1993, Memory & cognition.

[13]  Yasuhiro Yamamoto,et al.  A framework that supports collective creativity in design using visual images , 1999, Creativity & Cognition.

[14]  Gilles Halin,et al.  Three Approaches of The Use of Image to Assist Architectural Design , 2003, CAADRIA proceedings.

[15]  Ji-Hyun Lee,et al.  Stimulating designers' creativity based on a creative evolutionary system and collective intelligence in product design , 2010 .

[16]  Joseph S. Valacich,et al.  Enhancing creativity in group collaboration: How performance targets and feedback shape perceptions and idea generation performance , 2015, Comput. Hum. Behav..

[17]  Maria C. Yang,et al.  A Step Beyond to Overcome Design Fixation: A Design-by-Analogy Approach , 2015 .

[18]  Nigel Cross,et al.  Creativity in the design process: co-evolution of problem–solution , 2001 .

[19]  M. Csíkszentmihályi,et al.  Creative Insight: The Social Dimension of a Solitary Moment , 2014 .

[20]  Udo Lindemann,et al.  SUPPORTING CREATIVITY IN CONCEPTUAL DESIGN: METHOD 635-EXTENDED , 2010 .

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

[22]  Ebru Cubukcu,et al.  Does Analogical Reasoning With Visual Clues Affect Novice and Experienced Design Students' Creativity? , 2010 .

[23]  Peter Armstrong,et al.  Talking design: negotiating the verbal–visual translation , 1998 .

[24]  Hernan Casakin,et al.  Metaphors in Design Problem Solving: Implications for Creativity , 2007 .

[25]  Daniel A. McAdams,et al.  Distributed ideation: idea generation in distributed capstone engineering design teams , 2011 .

[26]  Jan Lundberg,et al.  Ideation methods applied in a cross-functional inter-organizational group: an exploratory case study from the railway sector , 2017 .

[27]  Jami J. Shah,et al.  Evaluation of idea generation methods for conceptual design: Effectiveness metrics and design of experiments , 2000 .

[28]  R. West.  What is shared? A framework for understanding shared innovation within communities , 2009 .

[29]  Yang Wang,et al.  IdeaWall: Improving Creative Collaboration through Combinatorial Visual Stimuli , 2017, CSCW.

[30]  Halime Demirkan,et al.  Understanding the Effects of Cognition in Creative Decision Making: A Creativity Model for Enhancing the Design Studio Process , 2007 .

[31]  Patricia M. Schwert.  Using Sentence and Picture Clues to Solve Verbal Insight Problems , 2007 .

[32]  Linda Candy,et al.  Designing collaborative environments for strategic knowledge in design , 2000, Knowl. Based Syst..

[33]  Carolyn Penstein Rosé,et al.  Agent-based dynamic support for learning from collaborative brainstorming in scientific inquiry , 2011, Int. J. Comput. Support. Collab. Learn..

[34]  S. Parnes,et al.  Applied Creativity: The Creative Studies Project: Part II--Results of the Two-Year Program. , 1972 .

[35]  Jaewoo Joo,et al.  Does a Persona Improve Creativity? , 2017 .

[36]  Massimiliano Palmiero,et al.  Abilities Within and Across Visual and Verbal Domains: How Specific Is Their Influence on Creativity? , 2010 .

[37]  Karl T. Ulrich,et al.  Idea Generation and the Quality of the Best Idea , 2009, Manag. Sci..

[38]  R. Reiter-Palmon,et al.  Facilitating creativity in interdisciplinary design teams using cognitive processes: A review , 2019 .

[39]  Kristin L. Wood,et al.  Ideation Methods: A First Study on Measured Outcomes With Personality Type , 2014 .

[40]  Sridhar S. Condoor,et al.  Design Fixation: a Cognitive Model , 2007 .

[41]  Nigel Cross,et al.  Descriptive models of creative design: application to an example , 1997 .

[42]  Susan R. Fussell,et al.  From diversity to creativity: stimulating group brainstorming with cultural differences and conversationally-retrieved pictures , 2011, CSCW.

[43]  Mauricio Camargo,et al.  Creativity support systems: A systematic mapping study , 2016 .

[44]  Kristin L. Wood,et al.  “Collaborating To Success”: An Experimental Study of Group Idea Generation Techniques , 2005 .

[45]  Mi Hyun Kim,et al.  Cognitive Characteristics and Design Creativity: An Experimental Study , 2005 .

[46]  Shih-Wen Hsiao,et al.  Time pressure and creativity in industrial design , 2017 .

[47]  Gabriela Goldschmidt,et al.  Expertise and the use of visual analogy: implications for design education , 1999 .