The Interplay between Creativity Issues and Design Theories: A New Perspective for Design Management Studies (original) (raw)

Design theories, creativity and innovation

The Elgar Companion to Innovation and Knowledge Creation

In this paper, we analyze the relationship between creativity issues and design theory. Although these two notions seemingly correspond to different academic fields (psychology, cognitive science and management for creativity; engineering science and logic for design theory), they appear to be deeply related when it comes to design methods and management. Analyzing three historical moments in design theorybuilding (the 1850s, with the ratio method for industrial upgrading in Germany; the 20 th century with systematic design and the 1920s with the Bauhaus theory), we point to the dialectical interplay that links creativity and design theory, structured around the notion of "fixation effect": creativity identifies fixation effects, which become the targets of new design theories; design theories invent models of thought to overcome them; and, in turn, these design theories can also create new fixation effects that will then be designated by creativity studies. This dialectical interplay leads to regular inventions of new ways of managing design, ie new ways of managing knowledge, processes and organizations for design activities. We use this framework to analyze recent trends in creativity and design theories.

The cognitive profile of creativity in design

Thinking Skills and Creativity, 2011

The objective of the study was to explore the cognitive profile of creativity in design by applying a new approach to the assessment of creativity based on the theory of meaning (Kreitler & Kreitler). The assessment of meaning enables to identify cognitive processes that characterize an individual as well as those necessary for good performance of some cognitive act, such

Past for the Future: The Evolution of the Concept of Creativity.

This year, 2009, is the European Year of Innovation and Creativity. Considering the speed of social, economic, environmental and technological change, the challenge of this millennium is to design a culture of creativity: a culture which is open to all changes and new opportunities and which is able to solve the many serious problems that the world is facing today. A culture in which creative thinking is not only demanded, but also encouraged and stimulated in all professional and private domains and organizations. To better understand this challenge for the future, this paper will describe the evolution of the creativity concept since the 1950's. This will be done in a multidisciplinary approach. Up to the late 1960s, the concept of creativity was dominated by the psychological foundations of Guilford, who introduced the still current concept of ‘Divergent Thinking' as the main ingredient of creativity. Apart from the boom of ‘Creative Techniques’ in the design field, the 1970s were the years in which creativity become an important issue in the development of organizations and commercial success: it saw the start of consultancy work in creativity and the coaching of teams. The most popular concept of this time was De Bono’s concept of 'Lateral Thinking'. From the late 1980s onwards, creativity is no longer a research field for just psychologists and educators, but for researchers in such different domains as physics, biology, neurology, sociology and management. Researchers such as Binnig, Amabile, Csikszentmihalyi or Guntern focused their studies on the evolutionary, social and the systemic perspective of creativity. On a social and political standard, the beginning of the new millennium is characterized by the concept of the 'Creative Age', which replaces a science obsessed era and the focus on marketing. During the mid-1990s, creativity as a broad-based attribute came to be commonplace: terms such as 'Creative Industries', ‘Creative Cities’ and 'Creative Economy' entered the political and popular vocabulary. In this context, in the last decade, several clustering movements and incubation centres have emerged, including in Portugal. At the end of the paper we will speculate about the future: Will the creative age survive into the next 40 years? Which kind of concept of creativity will be dominant? What will be the consequences of the new creativity approach for designers and other professionals in the creative economy?

Nascent directions for design creativity research

International Journal of Design Creativity and Innovation

Design is recognized as one of the creative professions but that does not mean that design equals creativity. Much of design is not creative, rather it is routine in the sense that the designs produced are those that are similar to existing designs and are only unique in terms of the situation they are in. However, there is value in producing designs that are considered creative in that they add significant value and change people's perceptions and, in doing so, have the potential to change society by changing its value system. A search for the terms 'design' and 'creativity' in books over the last 200 years (using Google's Ngram) shows that the term "design' was well established by 1800 and its use dropped between 1800 and 1900, after which its use increased to 2000. The term 'creativity' only came into noticeable use from 1940 on (Figure 1). It is, therefore, not surprising that creativity research is a young field. Much of early design creativity research has focused on distinguishing design creativity from designing; typically, by attempting to determine when and how a designer was being creative while they were designing. This still remains an important area of design creativity research that deserves considerable attention. Much of the design creativity research over the last 30-40 years has focused on either cognitive studies of designers or on building computational models of creative processes, generally using artificial intelligence or cognitive models. As in other areas of design research, there has been interest in developing cognitive creativity support tools. These two paradigmatic approaches have yielded interesting and important results. Tools can be categorized along a spectrum from passive through responsive to active. Passive tools need to be directly invoked by the designer and remain unchanged by their use. A spreadsheet is an exemplary example of a general passive tool. Passive tools that support design creativity include, for example, morphological analysis and TRIZ. Responsive tools need to be directly invoked by the designer but are changed by their use and do so by learning (Gero, 1996). They aim to tailor their response to the user over time. They tend to be developed for a specific purpose and are often proprietary. Active tools interact with the designer, i.e., they respond to what the designer is doing and make proposals. More recently, there has been interest in studying creativity when the designer is using responsive and active creativity aids. These aids cover a wide spectrum. Here two new categories will be considered: artificial intelligence that supports co-creation and neuro-based creativity enhancement. These two approaches form the basis of two nascent directions that are fundamentally different to the current directions of cognitive studies and passive cognitive support tools. In addition, there have been studies with drugs that affect the brain and that anecdotally enhance creativity. Alcohol has been shown to have a mild positive effect on the remote association creativity test but impairs divergent thinking, which is involved in design creativity (Norlander, 1999). However, controlled studies with Ritalin (methylphenidate) (Baas et al., 2020), cannabis (tetrahydrocannabinol) (Kowal et al., 2015) and LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) Figure 1. Google's Ngram on the appearance of the terms "design" (blue line) and "creativity" (red line) in books since 1800.

The Evolution of the Creativity Concept

The Creativity Virus - A Book about and for Creative Thinking, 2019

This article is a chapter of the book "The Creativity Virus", published by Katja Tschimmel in 2019, on the 15th of April 2019 in honour of Leonardo da Vinci's 567th anniversary and in the context of the World Creativity and Innovation Week. The article introduces the evolution of the concept 'creativity' from a Psychological to a Systemic Approach.

Commentary on The Psychology of Creativity: A Critical Reading by Vlad P. Glăveanu

Creativity: Theories – Research – Applications, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 223-227., 2014

Glaveanu's (2014) article raises many interesting and important points about the nature and status of creativity research, with perhaps the most important being the need for "dialogue and collaboration" (p. 28). While I agree that there is much that could be done differently, and possibly better, I would stop short of claiming that "the psychology of creativity is close to a crisis" (p. 10). Nevertheless, like the recent special section on Replications in Psychology prompted by Makel's article in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts (Makel, 2014), wide-ranging discussion should be encouraged and supported. My own position in the debate is influenced by two facts. First, my creativity heritage, so to speak, is largely psychological in nature. Although not a psychologist, I came to the field through the tutelage of researchers embedded in the psychology of creativity, so that if Schools of Thought can be said to exist in creativity research, then I tend to see myself as a product of the Psychological School of Creativity. Second, my professional heritage is engineering. Where this influences my views on creativity is probably most strongly seen in my particular interest in practical applications of creativity. As an engineer, what concerns me mostand the question I most often have to address when talking to colleagues and potential engineering clients -is the "so what" of creativity. What value does it add to a discipline like engineering? Why should an engineering firm, or the engineering department of a University, for that matter, care about creativity?

AN EXCURSION INTO PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY OF CREATIVITY

KNOWLEDGE – International Journal , 2019

Creativity is usually characterized by originality and effectiveness, novelty and appropriateness, quality and high intelligence. Knowledge and creativity are interrelated, knowledge favors creativity and creativity allows the discovery of new knowledge. However, they are also opposed in the sense that creativity sometimes can contradict the so far established or traditional knowledge. The psychology of creativity is flourishing, but research in the area of the philosophy of creativity is scarce. Here I present a philosophical analysis of philosophy of creativity and the power of knowledge, which answers the important question about the interrelationship between philosophy and creativity. Sigmund Freud in his article on creativity "Creative Writers and Daydreaming" (1908) identified the process of creativity with children's phantasying and conceived of creative writers as persons who perform sublimation. In this line of reasoning, Strachey conceived of creative writers as "successful neurotics". According to Hausman (1979), there are four utmost questions about creativity, namely: "Who is the creator? Why does the creator create? What happens when the creator creates? and How does the creator create?" In general there are numerous strategies how one can enhance one's creative capacity, including by psychopharmacological neuroenhancement. Pragmatic strategies, for example, include the following ones: 1) performance of proposed steps more efficiently, 2) increase of the amount of time spent or the number of times a given step is performed., 3) the a performance of steps, but in different order and 4) the introduction of a brand new stage model (Gascón & Kaufman, 2010). Plato's and Aristotle's views on creativity were antagonistic: Plato argued that creativity is a mysterious act of imitation, whereas Aristotle argued that it is a scientifically explainable act. Immanuel Kant conceived of creativity of geniuses as a natural gift, which rules are not given and that creativity as a capacity cannot be taught. Arthur Schopenhauer conceived of creativity as a pure contemplation of Ideas and noted the similarities between creative geniuses and madmen. Bertrand Russell's contribution is that he proposed a genuine test for creativity. More recently, the dark side of creativity in terms of malevolent usage of creative products or even malevolent creative acts. Finally, it is noted that a positive correlation between creativity scores and certain psychopathological illnesses, such as hypomania, mania, schizophrenia and schizotypal personality disorders has been found. This correlation seems to be related to dopaminergic function in the brain. A conclusion is reached that creativity in fact appears before a degeneration in terms of psychopathology appears.