Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T03:53:05.388Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The effect of representation of triggers on design outcomes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2008

Prabir Sarkar
Affiliation:
Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India
Amaresh Chakrabarti
Affiliation:
Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India

Abstract

Creativity of designers can be enhanced by the application of appropriate triggers. The presence of triggers helps designers to search solution spaces. The searching of a solution space increases the possibility of finding creative solutions. Both representation and content of the triggers or stimulus to which the designers are exposed are believed to play a vital role in the representation and content of the outcome of the designers during problem solving. We studied the effect of representation of triggers on ideas generated by six design engineers while trying to solve a given problem. A variety of representations (video/animation and audio, text, explanation, and others) that are potentially useful to designers for five prespecified triggers were administered to each designer, who generated ideas in response to each trigger–representation combination individually. The effect of representations of these triggers on the content and representation of the solutions generated by the design engineers was studied. The results showed significant influence of the representation of the triggers on the representations, number, and quality of the resulting ideas that were generated.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Adler, A., & Davis, R. (2004). Speech and Sketching for Multimodal Design, IUI'04. Funchal, Portugal: Maderia.Google Scholar
Ainsworth, S.E., & Van Labeke, N. (2002). Using a multi-representational design framework to develop and evaluate a dynamic simulation environment. Dynamic Information and Visualisation Workshop, Tubingen.Google Scholar
Boden, M.A. (1994). What is creativity? In Dimensions of Creativity (Boden, M.A., Ed.), pp. 75117. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cambridge University Press. (2007). Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chakrabarti, A., Sarkar, P., Leelavathamma, , & Nataraju, B. (2005). A functional representation for aiding biomimetic and artificial inspiration of new ideas. Artificial Intelligence in Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing 19 (2), 113132.Google Scholar
Chandrasekaran, B. (1988). Design: an information processing level analysis. In Design Problem Solving: Knowledge Structures and Control Strategies (Brown, D., & Chandrasekaran, B., Eds.). London: Pitman.Google Scholar
Chandrasekaran, B. (1999). Multimodal perceptual representations and design problem solving. Visual and Spatial Reasoning in Design: Computational and Cognitive Approaches Conf., MIT, Cambridge, MA, June 1517.Google Scholar
Freemantle, D. (2001). The Stimulus Factor. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.Google Scholar
Goel, A.K., & Chandrasekaran, B. (1989). Functional representation of designs and redesign problem solving. Int. Joint Conf. Artificial Intelligence, pp. 13881394.Google Scholar
Goel, V. (1995). Sketches of Thought. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gross, M.D., Johnson, B.R., & Do, E.Y.-L. (2001). The design amanuensis—an instrument for multimodal design capture and playback. Proc. Int. Conf. Computer Aided Architectural Design Futures, pp. 113.Google Scholar
Indian Institute of Science. (2004). Idea-Inspire User's Manual. Bangalore, India: Indian Institute of Science, Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing.Google Scholar
Jansson, D.G., & Smith, S.M. (1991). Design fixation. Design Studies 12 (1), 311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kletke, M., Mackay, J.M., Barr, S.M., & Jones, B. (2001). Creativity in the organization: the role of individual creative problem solving and computer support. International Journal of Human–Computer Studies 55, 217237.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Larkin, J.H., & Simon, H.A. (1987). Why a diagram is (sometimes) worth ten thousand words. Cognitive Science 11 (1), 6599.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liberman, J.N. (1977). Playfulness. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
MacCrimmon, K.R., & Wagner, C. (1994). Stimulating ideas through creative software. Management Science 40, 15141532.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayer, R.E. (1993). Illustrations that impact. In Advances in Instructional Psychology (Glaser, R., Ed.), Vol. 4, pp. 253284. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Microsoft. (2007). Encarta World English Dictionary. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation.Google Scholar
Mycoted. (2007). Creativity techniques: an A to Z. Accessed athttp://www.mycoted.com/Category:Creativity_TechniquesGoogle Scholar
Nakakoji, K. (1993). Increasing shared understanding of a design task between designers and design environments: the role of a specification component. PhD Thesis. University of Colorado at Boulder.Google Scholar
Oxford University Press. (2007). Oxford Compact English Dictionary. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Potelle, H., & Rouet, J.-F. (2003). Effects of content representation and readers' prior knowledge on the comprehension of hypertext. International Journal of Human–Computer Studies 58 (3), 327345.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sarkar, P., & Chakrabarti, A. (2007). Understanding search in design. Int. Conf. Engineering Design, ICED'07, Paris, August 2831.Google Scholar
Schnotz, W. (2002). Commentary—towards an integrated view of learning from text and visual displays. Educational Psychology Review 14 (1), 101120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suthers, D., & Hundhausen, C. (2002). The effect of representation on students elaborations in collaborative enquiry. Proc. Int. Conf. Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, Boulder, CO.Google Scholar
Torrance, E.P. (1979). The gifted and the talented: their education and development. In The Gifted and the Talented: Their Education and Development (Passow, A.H., Ed.), pp. 352371. Chicago: National Society for the Study of Education.Google Scholar
Watson, D.L. (1989). Enhancing creative productivity with the Fisher associated lists. Journal of Creative Behavior 23 (1), 5158.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woodbury, R.F., & Burrow, A.L. (2006). Whither design space? AIEDAM: Artificial Intelligence for Engineering, Design, and Manufacturing 20 (1), 6382.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, L.F. (1987). The metaphor machine: a database method for creativity support. Decision Making Support System 3, 309317.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zabel, A., Deisinger, J., Weller, F., & Hamisch, T. (1999). A multimodal design environment. Proc. ESS European Simulation Symp. Exhibition, Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany.Google Scholar