Human creativity originates from brain cortical networks that are specialized in idea generation, processing, and evaluation. The concurrent verbalization of our inner thoughts during the execution of a design task enables the use of dynamic semantic networks as a tool for investigating, evaluating, and monitoring creative thought. The primary advantage of using lexical databases such as WordNet for reproducible information-theoretic quantification of convergence or divergence of design ideas in creative problem solving is the simultaneous handling of both words and meanings, which enables interpretation of the constructed dynamic semantic networks in terms of underlying functionally active brain cortical regions involved in concept comprehension and production. In this study, the quantitative dynamics of semantic measures computed with a moving time window is investigated empirically in the DTRS10 dataset with design review conversations and detected divergent thinking is shown to predict success of design ideas. Thus, dynamic semantic networks present an opportunity for real-time computer-assisted detection of critical events during creative problem solving, with the goal of employing this knowledge to artificially augment human creativity.

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.

The paper emphasizes the need to consider negative aspects of creativity, especially in design, where it can have significant societal impacts. It calls for a more comprehensive view of creativity that includes both positive and negative effects and proposes a research approach to assess the potential negative consequences of creative work.

This study aimed to identify and compare the EEG activities associated with semantic and episodic memory retrieval during creative processes. Episodic and semantic memory induction studies were conducted and EEG was used to collect data. The results showed that (i) Episodic and semantic memory retrieval are related to the frontal lobe area; (ii) Semantic memory retrieval is evoked more swiftly compared with episodic memory retrieval (ii) Prior to episodic memory retrieval, semantic memory retrieval is evoked first.

Problems, solutions, and design itself have been framed as spaces in design research. Visualising the design space and how designers explore it, can give insight into the design process. This paper reports on a novel method for creating Design Space Visualisations (DS-Viz) that generates 2D and 3D representations of design spaces. We show how DS-Viz can be used to investigate designer behaviour, design processes and outcomes using a game-based design activity as an example. We discuss DS-Viz implications for design research highlighting potential benefits to design education and practice.

The relationship between culture and creativity has sparked the interest of researchers for decades. Although researchers have attempted to establish a connection between culture and creativity, the precise relationship between the two remains ambiguous. The current paper examined extant literature on the subject matter and synthesized the relations between culture and creativity in ideation over the past twenty years. The present study expounds upon the utilized samples, measures implemented to assess creativity and culture, and the study results.

Workspaces can enhance the creativity of the designers that occupy them. Here, we review experimental studies of creative spaces to identify constructs that mediate (explain) the relationship between physical spaces and creative performance. Through a literature review of 8 journal articles comprising 13 experiments, we identify 14 constructs involving cognitive, affective and physiological components. Knowledge of these mediators can help researchers to formulate hypotheses, select control variables, and develop conceptual models and theories of creative spaces in design.

This study explores the application of image generative AI to support design process by creating inspiration boards. Through an evaluative study, we compare the diversity, quantity, fidelity, and ambiguity of boards generated by image generative AI and traditional methods. The results highlight how generative AI produces a quantity of images, it exhibits limited diversity compared to traditional methods. This suggests a tendency for supporting interpolation rather than extrapolation of ideas, in turn providing insights on best practice and into the optimal stage for its application.

Gender is a crucial factor for creativity in design. Although the participation and recognition of successful and prominent women in the field of design seems to be increasing, many more men are still recognised and regarded as creative. This paper analyses the gender differences in design creativity. First, a summary of studies on gender differences in creativity in general is presented. It then discusses three critical aspects of gender differences in design creativity. Finally, some ways in which women's creativity can be encouraged and supported are outlined.

The study aims to grasp the dynamic characteristics of paralinguistic communication during co-creation and has developed an analysis methodology by clustering the conversational patterns and determining the criteria more often observed in pre-resonance. The results suggest that pre-resonance is characterized by less silence, a rapid transition in exchanging ideas under one's initiative, and a conversation with equal amounts of utterances between both in a pair. This study reveals implications for better communication that lead to resonance, an essential phenomenon in collaborative design.

Research on empathy has been surging in popularity in the engineering design community since empathy is known to help designers develop a deeper understanding of the users’ needs. Because of this, the design community has become more invested in devising and assessing empathic design activities. However, research on empathy has been primarily limited to individuals, meaning we do not know how it impacts team performance, particularly in the concept generation and selection stages of the design process. Specifically, it is unknown how the empathic composition of teams, defined here as the average (elevation) and standard deviation (diversity) of team members’ empathy, would impact design outcomes during nominal group concept generation and early concept screening. Therefore, the goal of the current study is to investigate the impact of team empathy on nominal group concept generation and early concept screening in an engineering design student project. This was accomplished through a computational simulation of 13,482 teams of non-interacting brainstorming individuals generated by a statistical bootstrapping technique. This simulation drew upon a design repository of 806 ideas generated by first-year engineering students. The main findings from the study indicated that the impact of the elevation and diversity of different components of team empathy varied depending upon the specific design outcome (number of ideas, overall creativity, elegance, usefulness, uniqueness) and design stage (concept generation and concept screening). The results from this study can be used to guide team formation in engineering design.

Inspirational stimuli are known to be effective in supporting ideation during early-stage design. However, prior work has predominantly constrained designers to using text-only queries when searching for stimuli, which is not consistent with real-world design behavior where fluidity across modalities (e.g., visual, semantic, etc.) is standard practice. In the current work, we introduce a multi-modal search platform that retrieves inspirational stimuli in the form of 3D-model parts using text, appearance, and function-based search inputs. Computational methods leveraging a deep-learning approach are presented for designing and supporting this platform, which relies on deep-neural networks trained on a large dataset of 3D-model parts. This work further presents the results of a cognitive study (n = 21) where the aforementioned search platform was used to find parts to inspire solutions to a design challenge. Participants engaged with three different search modalities: by keywords, 3D parts, and user-assembled 3D parts in their workspace. When searching by parts that are selected or in their workspace, participants had additional control over the similarity of appearance and function of results relative to the input. The results of this study demonstrate that the modality used impacts search behavior, such as in search frequency, how retrieved search results are engaged with, and how broadly the search space is covered. Specific results link interactions with the interface to search strategies participants may have used during the task. Findings suggest that when searching for inspirational stimuli, desired results can be achieved both by direct search inputs (e.g., by keyword) as well as by more randomly discovered examples, where a specific goal was not defined. Both search processes are found to be important to enable when designing search platforms for inspirational stimuli retrieval.

Extant research indicates that Chinese higher education has overlooked creativity. However, based on indirect clues, we infer that the degree of emphasis on creativity and related courses in Chinese higher education has changed. Therefore, we conducted a survey using a questionnaire to compare the creativity-related courses and adopted creativity methods in higher education between China and developed countries. The results indicate that participation rates and assessments of creativity-related courses, adopted creativity methods, and evaluations differ between China and developed countries.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the concept generation process on metacognition, and the relation between individual concept generation characteristics and the nature of collaboration. The results of the experiment revealed that the attitude affects individual concept generation characteristics, the meta-cognition developed and the quality of the concepts generated. In paired concept generation, the awareness and the attitude toward the partner and individual concept generation characteristics affect the nature of both the collaborative process and generated concepts.

There has been an increasing interest in intergenerational activities where young people and older adults work together in the exchange of knowledge, new ideas, methodologies and ways of thinking. With the leading international climate change conference in Glasgow in Nov. 2021, this paper presents an intergenerational co-design COP26 project where co-design pairs designed and made Glasgow COP26 souvenirs, exhibited and sold them in a COP26 ‘pop-up’ shop. The project delivered important learning and teaching including project launch, studio sessions, external design reviews, and prototyping.

To renew their innovation and creativity practices, companies are now equipping themselves with new specific places: innovation laboratories. These laboratories support project teams during creativity sessions to generate ideas. In order to improve these practices, it is necessary to be able to assess and compare the different sessions organised. By joining the Clean Mobility Lab of Faurecia, we were able to analyse, observe and participate in creativity sessions. This immersion allowed us to develop an assessment grid of forty-eight indicators covering the entire creativity process.

The design of service robots is typically treated as a mechatronic design problem aimed at implementation of its core technical functionalities. Intuitive operation and usability are ignored. We developed a trash-picking service robot with a strong focus on human-robot interaction (HRI) using the double diamond framework. The HRI-focussed hardware features were successfully implemented and tested. The results were shown to satisfy the ease of operation and usability requirements set as development goals for the robot.

Product design is a key aspect of human intelligence and creativity, attracting not only experts but also workers and self-employed without any formal design training. Although numerous people in developing countries design and manufacture simple products in metalworking microenterprises, there is very little systematic knowledge about their design process. This paper aims to fill this gap in design knowledge. We aim at investigating some aspects of design process in the metalworking microenterprises in Tanzania. The findings reveal how they identify needs, and generate and evaluate concepts.

This paper reports a preliminary study (N=16) exploring vividness of visual mental imagery in product design ideation. Vividness was observed to vary across designers in the study, from high (68.8% of participants) to moderate (18.8%) to low (12.5%). A significant, strong positive relationship was found between vividness and creativity. Most participants reported using imagery always or sometimes, except one who has difficulties forming mental images. The results have several implications, including the possibility of other ‘ways of imagining’ not captured by visual reasoning models of design.

Over the past decade, engineering design research has seen a significant surge of the discussion of empathy. As such, design researchers have been devoted in devising and assessing empathic design activities. While prior research has examined the utility of empathic design experiences on driving creative concept generation, little is known about the role of a designer's empathic tendencies in driving creative concept generation and selection in an engineering design project. Without this knowledge, we cannot be sure if, when, or how empathy influences the design process. Thus, the main goal of this paper was to identify the role of trait empathy in creative concept generation and selection in an engineering design student project. In order to achieve this objective, a study was conducted with 103 first-year engineering students during two design stages of an 8-week design project (concept generation and concept selection). The main findings from this paper highlighted that empathic concern tendencies positively impacted the generation of more ideas while personal distress tendencies negatively impacted the generation of more ideas. During concept selection, perspective-taking tendencies positively impacted participants’ propensity for selecting elegant ideas. This research took the first step in encouraging empirical investigations aimed at understanding the role of trait empathy across different stages of the design process.