Cognitive heuristics in design: Instructional strategies to increase creativity in idea generation

2010 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Yilmaz ◽  
C.M. Seifert ◽  
R. Gonzalez
Keyword(s):  
Personal Development ◽  
Design Education ◽  
Divergent Thinking ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
Cognitive Strategies ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Problem Space ◽  
Experimental Conditions ◽  
Design Heuristics ◽  
First Year College Students

AbstractThis paper explores the use of heuristics as cognitive strategies invoked during the process of design. Heuristics are reasoning processes that do not guarantee the best solution, but often lead to potential solutions by providing a simple cognitive “shortcut.” We propose that designers use specific design heuristics to explore the problem space of potential designs, leading to the generation of creative solutions. We test whether design heuristics can be taught to novices, and suggest their use will facilitate the design process at multiple levels of instruction. In the present empirical study, we evaluate a set of six instructional heuristics and validate their effectiveness with product concepts generated by novice designers. Six hundred seventy-three drawings were created by 120 first-year college students under four instructional conditions. Drawings were coded according to their content, use of heuristics, creativity, and practicality. The most creative concepts emerged from the experimental conditions where heuristics were introduced. Heuristics appeared to help the participants “jump” to a new problem space, resulting in more varied designs, and a greater frequency of designs judged as more creative. Our findings suggest that simple demonstration of design heuristics may, at times, be sufficient to stimulate divergent thinking, perhaps because these heuristics are readily grasped and contextual application is not required. Based on these findings, a conceptual model for design education emphasizing the importance of using a variety of heuristics is proposed. This model suggests that learning can be enhanced through exposure to a variety of design heuristics, and can supplement formal education and foster personal development in design learning.

Dreamlike and Playful Virtual Environments to Inspire Children’s Divergent Thinking

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Jérôme Guegan ◽  
Claire Brechet ◽  
Julien Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Divergent Thinking ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Combined Processes ◽  
Office Environment ◽  
School Aged Children

Abstract. Computers have long been seen as possible tools to foster creativity in children. In this respect, virtual environments present an interesting potential to support idea generation but also to steer it in relevant directions. A total of 96 school-aged children completed a standard divergent thinking task while being exposed to one of three virtual environments: a replica of the headmistress’s office, a replica of their schoolyard, and a dreamlike environment. Results showed that participants produced more original ideas in the dreamlike and playful environments than in the headmistress’s office environment. Additionally, the contents of the environment influenced the selective exploration of idea categories. We discuss these results in terms of two combined processes: explicit references to sources of inspiration in the environment, and the implicit priming of specific idea categories.

scholarly journals EVALUATION OF THE FASHION DRAWING (ILLUSTRATION) LESSON TEACHING PROGRAM UNDER THE LIGHT OF LECTURERS’ AND STUDENTS’ OPINIONS

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (60) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Art Education ◽  
Design Education ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
Fashion Design ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Examination System ◽  
Art And Design ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Dimensional Plane ◽  
Figure Drawing

While clothing is produced and consumed rapidly, it strives to create appropriate forms and to create appropriate identities by giving correct messages; therefore, it is one of the most important fields requiring art and design education. The fashion design student, who forms the infrastructure with basic art education and figure drawing, not only transfers the imagination to the two-dimensional plane with the fashion drawing lesson but also transfers it to the two-dimensional plane; at the same time, he takes art and design education, which is aesthetic education, and feeds his visual vision and mind. In this research, the Fashion Drawing Lesson has been examined in detail in terms of determining the place, position, importance, processing and content of the Fashion Drawing Lesson in the official fashion design curriculum and a comprehensive literature search has been conducted; then the matter has been tried to be examined thanks to a link has been established between education, fashion, art and design disciplines. The course syllabus in Turkey and some of fashion design course programs in the world were examined; the experts providing fashion formal education and the students who received fashion formal education were interviewed face-to-face to obtain information first-hand. First of all, the study started by determining the fashion design undergraduate programs in the OSYM (Assessment Selection and Placement Center) placement guide and examining the course hours, course times and course contents of the fashion formal courses in these programs. The researcher visited the designated universities for the purpose of on-site observation and interview, and conducted semi-structured interview questions and face-to-face interviews with experts and students and recorded them. The transcribed interviews were analyzed using content analysis method and the findings were interpreted within the framework of the research questions. The findings were interpreted and discussed, and after the results were written, suggestions about the study were included. As a result, it has been determined that the admission of students to the fashion design program should be made with the combination of central examination system and talent exam suitable for fashion design education. It was seen that the time granted for the program was not sufficient in mean of implementation of the fashion drawing lessons properly in the fashion design education programs. Keywords: Fashion drawing, fashion illustration, design education, fashion design education, art education

scholarly journals Promoting Youth Development Worldwide: The Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Van Baren ◽  
Marieke Meelen ◽  
Lucas C.P.M. Meijs
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Youth Development ◽  
Personal Development ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Learning Approach ◽  
International Award ◽  
Award Program ◽  
Educational Framework ◽  
Physical Recreation

The Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award is a youth achievement Award program that aims to engage young people in purposeful activities focused on gaining knowledge, broadening horizons and accumulating a diversity of experiences. The program promotes positive youth development through an experienced based learning approach and is known to play a vital role in providing opportunities for young people to develop essential life skills, complementing their formal education. Comprised of three levels (Bronze, Silver and Gold) and four sections (Service, Skills, Physical Recreation and Adventurous Journey) the Award is designed to provide a balanced programme of personal development. The Award operates worldwide in over 140 countries and territories, through the International Award Association. This article will discuss The Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award program and its non-formal educational framework. Participants reported that it has enabled them to grow in confidence and in their ability to contribute positively to their communities.

scholarly journals Insight and Search in Katona’s Five-Square Problem

2014 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 263-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Öllinger ◽  
Gary Jones ◽  
Günther Knoblich
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Cognitive Model ◽  
Search Space ◽  
Problem Representation ◽  
Problem Space ◽  
Experimental Conditions ◽  
Insight Problem ◽  
Insight Problem Solving ◽  
Representational Change ◽  
Human Thinking

Insights are often productive outcomes of human thinking. We provide a cognitive model that explains insight problem solving by the interplay of problem space search and representational change, whereby the problem space is constrained or relaxed based on the problem representation. By introducing different experimental conditions that either constrained the initial search space or helped solvers to initiate a representational change, we investigated the interplay of problem space search and representational change in Katona’s five-square problem. Testing 168 participants, we demonstrated that independent hints relating to the initial search space and to representational change had little effect on solution rates. However, providing both hints caused a significant increase in solution rates. Our results show the interplay between problem space search and representational change in insight problem solving: The initial problem space can be so large that people fail to encounter impasse, but even when representational change is achieved the resulting problem space can still provide a major obstacle to finding the solution.

scholarly journals How do designers generate new ideas? Design heuristics across two disciplines

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seda Yilmaz ◽  
Shanna R. Daly ◽  
Colleen M. Seifert ◽  
Richard Gonzalez
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Strategies ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Design Concepts ◽  
Design Heuristics ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Industrial Designers ◽  
Protocol Study ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Design Heuristic

Research supports the central role cognitive strategies can play in successful concept generation by individual designers. Design heuristics have been shown to facilitate the creation of new design concepts in the early, conceptual stage of the design process, as well as throughout the development of ideas. However, we know relatively little about their use in differing disciplines. This study examined evidence of design heuristic use in a protocol study with 12 mechanical engineers and 12 industrial designers who worked individually to develop multiple concepts. The open-ended design problem was for a novel product, and the designers’ sketches and comments were recorded as they worked on the problem for 25 min and in a retrospective interview. The results showed frequent use of design heuristics in both disciplines and a significant relationship to the rated creativity of the concepts. Though industrial designers used more heuristics in their concepts, there was a high degree of similarity in heuristic use. Some differences between design disciplines were observed in the choice of design heuristics, where industrial designers showed a greater emphasis on user experience, environmental contexts, and added features. These findings demonstrate the prevalence of design heuristics in individual concept generation and their effectiveness in generating creative concepts, across two design domains.

scholarly journals The Liking Gap in Conversations: Do People Like Us More Than We Think?

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (11) ◽  
pp. 1742-1756 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erica J. Boothby ◽  
Gus Cooney ◽  
Gillian M. Sandstrom ◽  
Margaret S. Clark
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Social Life ◽  
General Public ◽  
Personal Development ◽  
First Year ◽  
First Year College ◽  
First Year College Students

Having conversations with new people is an important and rewarding part of social life. Yet conversations can also be intimidating and anxiety provoking, and this makes people wonder and worry about what their conversation partners really think of them. Are people accurate in their estimates? We found that following interactions, people systematically underestimated how much their conversation partners liked them and enjoyed their company, an illusion we call the liking gap. We observed the liking gap as strangers got acquainted in the laboratory, as first-year college students got to know their dorm mates, and as formerly unacquainted members of the general public got to know each other during a personal development workshop. The liking gap persisted in conversations of varying lengths and even lasted for several months, as college dorm mates developed new relationships. Our studies suggest that after people have conversations, they are liked more than they know.

Design Ideation Through Speculative Fiction: Foundational Principles and Exploratory Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 143 (8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maulik C. Kotecha ◽  
Ting-Ju Chen ◽  
Daniel A. McAdams ◽  
Vinayak Krishnamurthy
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Engineering Design ◽  
User Interfaces ◽  
Divergent Thinking ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Speculative Fiction ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Practical Case ◽  
Generation Process ◽  
Design Ideation

Abstract The objective of this study is to position speculative fiction as a broader framework to stimulate, facilitate, and study engineering design ideation. For this, we first present a comprehensive and detailed review of the literature on how fiction, especially science fiction, has played a role in design and decision-making. To further strengthen the need for speculative fiction for idea stimulation, we further prototype and study a prototype workflow that utilizes excerpts from speculative fiction books as textual stimuli for design ideation. Through a qualitative study of this workflow, we gain insights into the effect of textual stimuli from science fiction narratives on design concepts. Our study reveals that the texts consisting of the terms from the design statement or closely related to the problem boost the idea generation process. We further discover that less directly related stimuli may encourage out-of-the-box and divergent thinking. Using the insights gained from our study, we pose critical questions to initiate speculative fiction-based design ideation as a new research direction in engineering design. Subsequently, we discuss current research directions and domains necessary to take the technical, technological, and methodological steps needed for future research on design methodologies based on speculative fictional inspiration. Finally, we present a practical case to demonstrate how an engineering design workflow could be operationalized by investigating a concrete example of the design of automotive user interfaces (automotive-UI) through the lens of speculative fiction.

Articulating Design Education

2014 ◽  
pp. 22-47
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Cultural Awareness ◽  
Design Education ◽  
Divergent Thinking ◽  
Design Thinking ◽  
Design Activity ◽  
Communitarian Ethics ◽  
Reflection In Action ◽  
And Control ◽  
Problematic Feature

Design as an activity may be conceptualized analytically by saying that it consists, first and foremost, in the ability to create visual images of new structures and products; secondly, in the ability to produce such images in a way that will balance the economic demands of clients with the cultural demands of society; and finally, in the ability to use and control various ICTs for the production of visualizations. At the core of design activity is the phenomenon of creativity, the most mysterious and problematic feature of design, because it is thought to emanate from the imagination in a way that precludes and defies rational choice and control. J. P. Guilford’s concept of divergent thinking helps to explain creativity, as does Donald Schön’s concept of reflection-in-action, contrasted to Herbert Simon’s argument that design thinking is primarily problem solving, but ultimately, creativity and imagination appear to be elusive and uncanny concepts. Aristotle’s insistence on the formally teleological nature of making suggests that there may be a difference between art, or pure creativity, and design, or technical creativity, with its emphasis on utility. Creativity has always been required of designers, but in today’s world cultural awareness is also needed, in order to comply with communitarian ethics, with its emphasis on co-operation and consensus building, directed mainly toward environmental sustainability. Finally, expertise in the use of ICTS is now being universally advocated for all designers.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
pp. 165-178
Keyword(s):  
Personal Development ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Practical Philosophy ◽  
Science Philosophy ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Way

After a quick reminder of this project's main objectives and their outcomes, this chapter considers the impact of a cross-disciplinary approach on education, arguing that it is not only a fruitful pedagogical method, but also a deeply enriching path for personal development, in the same way that mentoring and international journeys are. We also consider what we have learned about the way in which science, philosophy, and narratives are intricately connected. We make recommendations for further research, especially on the role of narratives and philosophy in other cross-disciplinary fields, such as culture, psychotherapy, and the challenges currently posed by technology. We encourage further exploration of the ways in which narratives may be abused to advance particular interests in various fields of public life. We end with a reminder of the prolific role of both stories and practical philosophy in the process of formative education (or personal development in general). Here, mentors and journeys have a key role, equivalent to that of internships in formal education.

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