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Creativity of products as meant by ordinary people: to what extent do novelty and usefulness matter?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2024

Aurora Berni ,
Yuri Borgianni  and
Demis Basso
Aurora Berni
Affiliation:
Free University of Bozen|Bolzano, Italy
Yuri Borgianni*
Affiliation:
Free University of Bozen|Bolzano, Italy
Demis Basso
Affiliation:
Free University of Bozen|Bolzano, Italy
*
[email protected]

Abstract

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In the design literature, creativity of products is recognized as a combination of novelty and usefulness. However, this mainly applies to the engineering field and within a community of experts. This study investigates how ordinary people understand creativity embodied in products. In an experiment with 70+ participants, 8 products and 5 metrics were dealt with. Novelty resulted as the main predictor of creativity. Usefulness turned to play a minor effect on perceived creativity. It emerged that usefulness has to make ordinary people like a specific product in order to link it to creativity.

Keywords

design creativityproduct designnoveltyordinary peoplecreativity assessment
Type
Human Behaviour and Design Creativity
Information
Proceedings of the Design Society , Volume 4: DESIGN 2024 , May 2024 , pp. 895 - 904
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
The Author(s), 2024.

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