Are product design researchers and practitioners on the same page? The way professional product designers view creative design

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to explore professional product designers’ views on creative design and to compare their viewpoints with the related academic literature on product marketing. Design/methodology/approach To find the designers’ views on creative design, face-to-face in-depth interviews based on repertory grid analysis and semi-structured questions were conducted with 32 professional and award-wining product designers who mostly design for international producers. Findings Although marketing scholars often approach design as a noun – something that can be viewed and analysed as a bundle of attributes, dimensions or characteristics – professional designers view design differently. To them, design is a verb, a problem-solving process through which they meet the challenges consumers have with products. Comparing professional product designers’ views on design creativity with the main topics in the product marketing literature places scholars’ dispositionalism against designers’ situationalism; it also enables marketing scholars to improve their viewpoints on product design and to bring practical problem-solving and design thinking into their research. This also increases mutual understanding between marketers and designers. Research limitations/implications This research enhances the knowledge of marketing scholars, marketers and designers about each other’s perspectives on product design creativity, which will improve their mutual understanding and the business-to-business relationship between marketers and designers. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first study that has attempted to discover product designers’ opinions on the main topics in the related academic literature.

Does change agent selection procedure matter? A strategic decision-making toward a more objective selection approach

“…The outcome was judged by the third author and then the differences were discussed until an agreement was reached. The interviews with the employees and managers lasted between 15 and 25 min (see Sameti et al. , 2022; Kim et al.…”

“…The outcome was judged by the third author and then the differences were discussed until an agreement was reached. The interviews with the employees and managers lasted between 15 and 25 min (see Sameti et al, 2022;Kim et al, 2016). The inquiry was conducted in the Persian language for maximum understanding of the participants and the statements quoted below have been translated with great care through the cooperation of all the authors.…”

Mapping Study of Design Thinking on Product Development in The Last 10 Years

“…Human-Centric is an approach adopted for characteristics that describe the capability of design thinking (Mikalef et al, 2021) with the ability to work in cross-disciplinary teams (F. Zhang et al, 2020), even both of which are considered suitable for carrying out innovation. Due to the desired uniqueness related to design thinking skills, several researchers are currently planning to increase research to understand how design thinking actually can be developed (Auernhammer & Roth, 2021;Kamal et al, 2020;Meinel et al, 2020;Ravanello et al, 2017;Sameti et al, 2022). A model was developed by Acklin regarding the design management absorption model which aims to provide support to SMEs with or without previous design experience to develop a mindset regarding design thinking as well as an indicator to measure the progress of absorption (Ravanello et al, 2017).…”

The Edcraft Catalogue: Collaboration of Artist and Academic in “Waste to Craft” Gamified Activity

“…Researchers Sameti, Koslow and Mashhady [11] compared 32 professional artists' opinions on design creativity with related academic literature and found that the artists view design as a problem-solving process to address customers' issues while academics approach to design as a collection of attributes, dimensions or characteristics that can be viewed and analysed. Similarly, Gera [16] stated that an academician is likely to frame problems and solutions in a theoretical and abstract context that appears unimportant and nonsensical to artists.…”