Sketches from a Design Process: Creative Cognition Inferred From Intermediate Products

Abstract

Novice designers produced a sequence of sketches while inventing a logo for a novel brand of soft drink. The sketches were scored for the presence of specific objects, their local features and global composition. Self-assessment scores for each sketch and art critics' scores for the end products were collected. It was investigated whether the design evolves in an essentially random fashion or according to an overall heuristic. The results indicated a macrostructure in the evolution of the design, characterized by two stages. For the majority of participants, the first stage is marked by the introduction and modification of novel objects and their local and global aspects; the second stage is characterized by changes in their global composition. The minority that showed the better designs has a different strategy, in which most global changes were made in the beginning. Although participants did not consciously apply these strategies, their self-assessment scores reflect the stages of the process.

Intelligence in creative processes: An EEG study

“…In doing so, components of the Toolbox and possible logical relationships between them must be temporarily held in mind to be explored in light of the task constraints in such a way that they result in a "correct" 3 × 3 matrix. Here, divergent thinking becomes intertwined with convergent thinking (Jaarsveld & van Leeuwen, 2005;Jaarsveld et al, 2012) because abilities such as hypothesis testing, evaluation, and selection must be applied to arrive at an applicable creation, namely, a solvable matrix.…”

“…When both types of thinking are considered as complex information processing abilities evolving in tasks that are not immediately solvable (Freund, Holling, & Preckel, 2007), they can be placed within one model (Guilford, 1956;Kaufmann, 2003). In that case, cognitive activities ensuing from an ill-defined task can be categorized as convergent thinking (which is associated with intelligence) and divergent thinking (which is associated with creativity), establishing that creative processes contain both modes of thinking intertwined (Cropley, 2006;Jaarsveld & van Leeuwen, 2005). In the creative process, on the other hand, convergent thinking assesses, evaluates, and integrates generated information.…”

Creative reasoning across developmental levels: Convergence and divergence in problem creation

“…Ill-defined problems have constraints that are inexplicit about how the solution should fit the criteria (Akin & Akin, 1998). To arrive at a solution, divergent thinking alone is not enough; ideas need to be forged into one clear and appropriate proposal (Bear, 2003;Jaarsveld & van Leeuwen, 2005), using models of the design's anticipated functional characteristics (Elias & Dasgupta, 2005;Viswanathan & Linsey, 2009). In the Geneplore model (Finke, Ward, & Smith, 1992) functional characteristics do constrain the generation or exploration phases of the process.…”

“…This perspective reflects the importance of flexibility, where an idea revolves around an ill-defined set of constraints, while dealing with multiple idiosyncrasies of the moment (Jaarsveld & van Leeuwen, 2005). According to Sternberg (2005) achieving this level of flexibility requires a synthesis of wisdom, intelligence, and creativity.…”

The relationship of analogical distance to analogical function and preinventive structure: the case of engineering design

“…Prime examples include such phenomena as functional fixedness, which involves restricting the uses of objects to well-known functions (Maier, 1931), and mental set, which involves situationally induced obstacles to problem solving (Luchins, 1942). Furthermore, it has been found that providing (Dahl & Moreau, 2002;Jaarsveld & van Leeuwen, 2005;Jansson & Smith, 1991;Marsh, Bink, & Hicks, 1999;Marsh, Ward, & Landau, 1999;Ward, 1994) or retrieving (Ward, 1994) existing examples may inhibit generative creative processes and may lead to a higher proportion of property transfers from the examples into the subject's own work (e.g., Marsh, Landau, & Hicks, 1996), even when the subject is explicitly instructed to avoid such transfer (e.g., Smith, Ward, & Schumacher, 1993). Source monitoring of this property transfer is especially poor in generative tasks (e.g., Marsh, Landau, & Hicks, 1997), which originally led to the label unconscious plagiarism, or cryptomnesia (Brown & Murphy, 1989;Marsh & Bower, 1993;Marsh & Landau, 1995;.…”