A model to analyse students’ cooperative idea gene

Authors: Magnus Hultén Henrik Artman David House

Publish Date: 2016/10/27

Volume: 28, Issue: 2, Pages: 451-470

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Abstract

In this article we focus on the cocreation of ideas Through the use of concepts from collaborative learning and communication theory we suggest a model that will enable the cooperative nature of creative design tasks to emerge Four objectives of the model are stated and elaborated on in the paper that the model should be anchored in previous research that it should allow for collaborative aspects of creative design to be accounted for that it should address the mechanisms by which new ideas are generated embraced and cultivated during actual design and that it should have a firm theoretical grounding The model is also exemplified by two test sessions where two student pairs perform a timeconstrained design task We hope that the model can play a role both as an educational tool to be used by students and a teacher in design education but primarily as a model to analyse students’ cooperative idea generation in conceptual designOver the last few decades education at all levels has seen a strong emphasis on widening and rearranged curricula in order to make room for innovation creativity and design eg Badran 2007 Cheung 2012 Cropley and Cropley 2010 Esjeholm 2015 Howard et al 2008 Rutland and Barlex 2008 Zhou 2012 Much research effort has been put into defining and characterising creativity and creative design processes examples of more extensive overviews Howard et al 2008 Plucker et al 2004 For example creative designs can be evaluated through concepts such as “relevance and effectiveness” “novelty” “elegance” and “generalisability” Cropley and Cropley 2010 Zhou 2012 p 349 Similarly qualities of creative processes have been proposed in terms of “divergent thinking” “investigative work” and “risk taking” and through recurrent phases of “analysis” “synthesis” and “evaluation” Lindström 2006 Wong and Siu 2012 Alongside conceptual developments research has also developed descriptive and educational models on creative design based on the synthesis of research on creativity and creative design theories of learning and new empirical findings eg Dorst and Cross 2001 Howard et al 2008 Rivard and Faste 2012 Wong and Siu 2012 Furthermore the use of exemplars to clarify the goals of creative design in educational settings has been proposed Hendry and Tomitsch 2014 the importance of meeting the emotional needs of students in order to foster creative design Siu and Wong 2016 and how prior conceptual knowledge and the balance between domain and process knowledge can affect student creativity in design Christiaans and Venselaar 2005 Esjeholm 2015 These are just some examples of research on creative design there is certainly no lack of concepts models or teaching tools and techniques in this area which point to the importance of contributions to the field building on previous insightsThe aim of this study is to develop a model that will enable analysis of cooperative idea generation in conceptual design The first objective of the model is to anchor it in previous and relevant research more specifically in a model of conceptual design developed by Dorst and Cross 2001 The second objective is that the model should allow for collaborative aspects of creative design to be accounted for Not much attention has been given to the collaborative aspects of creative processes eg Artman et al 2014 Juhl and Lindegaard 2013 Ramberg et al 2013 In particular decisionmaking processes have been highlighted as an area of importance for further study eg Stempfle and BadkeSchaub 2002 Wiltschnig et al 2013 Toh and Miller 2015 p 115 We believe that both design education as well as research on creative design more generally will benefit from studies that—like the current study—try to understand and conceptualize how novices develop and perform creative design collaboratively The third objective of the model is that it should address the mechanisms by which new ideas are generated embraced and cultivated during actual design something that previous research has pointed out is lacking in existing models Howard et al 2008 p 176 Dorst and Cross 2001 p 425 Plucker et al 2004 Toh and Miller 2015 The fourth and final objective is to give the model developed a firm theoretical grounding As a way to illustrate and exemplify the use of the model two test sessions were implemented with two pairs of studentsThe model presented in this article was developed by the authors of this study out of a need to understand the creative processes that took place during interactionaries a short design task lasting from about 10–30 min that a team of students had to solve overtly in front of the researchers See Artman et al 2014 Ramberg et al 2013 Development of the model was initiated by applying the concept of transformation cf Selander 2008 as this concept could elucidate the dynamics of the ideation process Along the way new concepts such as common ground were added We gradually started to connect and link the concepts to each other and made preliminary models aimed at capturing cooperative idea generation in conceptual design Finally we arrived at the model that will be presented here As a pure theoretical presentation of the model would have risked being too abstract test sessions were included in order to illustrate possible uses/applications of the model in analysing collaborative conceptual designCross 1997 argues that what we call a “creative event” is not the generation of a solution to a problem but rather the building of a “bridge” between what is called “the problem space” and “the solution space” and this happens through the identification of a key concept Dorst and Cross 2001 confirm this in their research and also suggest that the relation between problem and solution spaces is evolving and unstable until fixed at least temporarily by a similar “bridge” They call the “creative event” the moment at which this bridge is formed Dorst and Cross also suggest that “the ‘creative’ aspect of design can be described by introducing the notions of ‘default’ and ‘surprise’ problem/solution spaces” 2001 p 436The primary aspect of the model in Fig 1 is a distinction between two spaces the problem space and the solution space and the gradual evolution of and interaction between these spaces Thus we cannot talk of a “design problem” as this as well as the solution take on different forms during the process In this paper we will not go into the evolution of how the problem space and solutions space are framed since this has been discussed elsewhere Dorst 2006 2011 Dorst and Cross 2001 Thus we have to keep in mind that when talking of a “design problem” this is not a fixed problem but something that continuously evolves during the process of design through framing and reframing relevant aspects of what designers consider important to the problem space The coevolution model which was originally validated in a thinkaloud task performed alone by professional designers has received empirical validation in cooperative settings in a study by Wiltschnig et al 2013 In their studies of a product development teams’ meetings they found that a coevolution thesis well matched the evolution of ideas in the conceptgeneration phase However the model lacks a firm theoretical grounding and it does not explicitly address cooperative aspects of conceptual design or the mechanism by which ideas are generated Before returning to the model by Dorst and Cross 2001 and anchoring it to the model proposed in this study we will address the other three objectives of our model

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