Paper summary - Creativity in the design process: co-evolution of problem–solution, by Kees Dorst and Nigel Cross

What I read

In this paper, the authors describe a structured study of industrial designers solving a problem; they then describe the way in which the problem is solved, and the way novelty appears in and is used in their process.

The authors begin by describing that creativity is often described as a flash of insight, or some sort of Moment in which a new idea occurs. They indicate that creative solutions are more complex than a simple moment, and that a protocol study will be used to further understand this complexity. They then describe the protocol study in some depth.

The study requires a way of grading or assessing creativity, which has often been viewed as subjective. They build on work from a PhD thesis by H. Christiaans, which indicated that expert assessors are consistent in judging work, and this can be used as a way of grading creative output. The study itself is an industrial design problem—creating a garbage bin for a train. This problem was given to experienced designers, in the context of a design consultancy (where external pressures and stakeholders contain the potential of a solution).

In the experiment, the designers were provided with information typical of a consultancy, such as a design brief, background information, details from fake research, and so-on. Then, the designers worked to solve the problem within 2.5 hours, and spoke out loud as they worked. When the designers were complete, each design was “re-drawn and presented in a similar format”, and then assessed through a formal scoring assignment. Scoring was assigned across various attributes, of which creativity was only one; the others were ergonomics, technical aspects, aesthetics, and business aspects.

The results indicated that, while creativity was important, “creativity (or any other aspect) was not emphasized to the designers as an all-important consideration.” Creativity was not always correlated with a successful design, and the authors conclude that “newness, novelty, or creativity [is treated] as only one aspect of an overall, integrated design concept.”

Next, the authors explore how problem framing played a role in the formulation of a creative output. Framing was a form of organization to an approach, with assignment of importance given to the various aspects of the project (again, with creativity being only one of those aspects.) The framing modified the design brief, adding new constraints and opportunities, and redirecting the designers from the original request entirely. They also describe how creativity is related to originality, and indicate that, while the designers developed what they thought was a creative or new idea, all of them arrived at the opportunity for this newness. The newness felt global, but was localized; it was an “’easy’ step in originality; that certain kinds of information in the problem data may spur similar ‘creative’ concepts.”

The authors arrive at the main contribution of the paper. Creativity has been typically considered a moment, or a search for newness. Their research shows that, instead, it is a back-and-forth between a stated problem space and a solution space, where each impacts and changes the other. A model developed by Maher et al is referenced as a reliable basis for this back-and-forth. The model is used with the data from the experiment.

Finally, the authors describe the nature of “bridges, frames, defaults and surprised.” They reference Cross ‘s work, which shows that a design problem is fuzzy until a strong connection (or bridge) has been established between problem and solution. Schon’s work of problem framing is cited as “crucial” to creativity. This framing is the identification of a “cluster of related information” between problem space and exploratory solution space. The clustering and potential output is compared to a recognized prototypical “default” state, and when surprise emerges, the designer then decides to embrace or reject the new (creative) outcome.

The authors draw the conclusion that “the ‘problem-solving’ aspect of design can be described usefully in terms of Maher’s model of the co-evolution of problem and solution spaces, and that the ‘creative’ aspect of design can be described by introducing the notions of ‘default’ and ‘surprise’ problem/solution spaces.”

What I learned and what I think

This paper is one of the few so far that recognize newness and novelty are only one part of a design solution, and do not necessarily constitute creativity—and that creativity exists in solutions that aren’t either new or novel. This is exactly right. Appropriate design is creative, and appropriate changes, or small changes, or incremental changes, are almost always what emerges from a design process in actual production software.

When we do a design strategy futuring project, the work is surprising in that it deviates purposefully from what the authors call the default situation. Default is existing, and pattern-based. It’s what experts (often stakeholders, or us when we’ve seen a problem and set of solutions before), expect to see. Clients are looking at their own products, and comparing them to industry norms and industry leaders. Those are the default, the templates, the patterns. Our futuring is surprising, and we dial up or down the surprisingness based on the appetite the client has for that level of surprise.

Often, the surprisingness is not surprising to anyone; it is simply “new” for the client themselves. For example, when we did work for Realtor, the “sounds from the street” was new to them, in the sense that their current products didn’t have that capability. But it wasn’t new in industry (I think both Zillow and Redfin had something similar at that time), and the client was fully aware of those other competitive products and feature sets; they were experts in competitiveness. We were creative in the sense that we tied research data to a new idea, and had the same sort of “new to us, not to them” that the authors reference about the newspaper ah-ha in their case study. We arrived at that creative solution by transforming their problem statement to us (Do we have permission to play in the first-time-buyers space?) into a set of criteria, where that particular feature was one visualization of the problem solution coming to life.

We often talk about how our work is user-centered, and that’s true in the sense that the research data, from users, helps us frame our solution criteria. But it’s not true, in the sense that the framing we are using is coming from our own experiences and patterning being applied to the emergent design ideas. If I backtrack from street sounds to research data, there were probably four big steps: the solution, treated at a high level of fidelity; a sketch of the solution, visualized loosely and a number of times; the idea of the solution, which came up in the workshop we held with the client; and the synthesized research data, which pointed to the idea of a micro-neighborhood vibe. Each of these was creative. Creativity is in the process—just as the paper is describing.

I’m thinking about method, as I eventually want to do something empirical around creativity education. I get the need to constrain a problem to limited variables, so it’s manageable and to identify some form of causality. But this research isn’t scientific research, and the phenomenon can’t actually be reduced in the same way.

The experimenters “treated” each of the sketches so they were in the same presentation style. But that’s not how a creative solution comes to life—the style and refinement of the sketch itself actually shapes the solution, the acceptance of the solution by the designer, and the excitement about the solution by the client (and, then, their implementation of it.) Presentation style isn’t extra; it is intertwined in the same framing and surprise and problem solving discussion.

They also applied a set of criteria for evaluation (ergonomics, aesthetics, etc) in a top-down manner. But design ideas are never evaluated in that formal style, and the hype or socialization of an idea shapes the idea, and the creativity of it, just as much as these individual attributes. The reduction of the design to a set of attributes makes it simpler to draw conclusions, but it doesn’t entirely reflect how our designs are actually evaluated.

I have the same sort of reaction to the formula introduced that tries to “math” its way to conclusiveness that I have had with several other papers. I’ll call that the “Dead Poet’s Society” approach, where Robin Williams has the students rip the 2x2 analysis of poetry out of the textbook. It’s such a strange artifact of academia, creating a formula for something like creativity. I don’t think it makes sense to try to put a scientific frame around a qualitative, experiential condition like design. Maybe that’s naïve on my part, but knowledge around the discipline can be created without this type of shaping.