A state-transition model of team conceptual design activity

Martinec, Tomislav; Škec, Stanko; Horvat, Nikola; Štorga, Mario

doi:10.1007/s00163-018-00305-1

Cited by 15 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 91 publications

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“…Contextually-modulated behavioral transitions during creative tasks have been shown to positively correlate with creative performance using think-aloud protocols in ecologically complex creative design tasks [4] and in cognitive control tasks such as the color-word Stroop task [3]. For example, during complex creative design tasks, experienced designers have been found to continually move between different subgoals as they iteratively and progressively discover, define, and seek to address emerging design issues or opportunities [5][6][7], and the frequency of such within-task transitions increases both with greater expertise, and leads to higher quality design outcomes [4]. Within experimental psychology, questions relating to cognitive flexibility have been extensively examined using experimenter-cued task-switching paradigms (e.g., number-letter tasks) [1,8] and set-shifting tasks such as the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task [9] and related tasks [10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Charting the contributions of cognitive flexibility to creativity: Self-guided transitions as a process-based index of creativity-related adaptivity

Koutstaal

2020

PLoS ONE

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Creativity is pivotal to solving complex problems of many kinds, yet how cognitive flexibility dynamically supports creative processes is largely unexplored. Despite being a crucial multi-faceted contributor in creative thinking, cognitive flexibility, as typically assessed, does not fully capture how people adaptively shift between varying or persisting in their current problem-solving efforts. To fill this theoretical and methodological gap, we introduce a new operationalization of cognitive flexibility: the process-based Self-Guided Transition (SGT) measures, which assess when participants autonomously choose to continue working on one of two concurrently presented items (dwell length) and how often they choose to switch between the two items (shift count). We examine how these measures correlate with three diverse creativity tasks, and with creative performance on a more complex "garden design" task. Analyses of the relations between these new cognitive flexibility measures in 66 young adults revealed that SGT dwell length positively correlated with creative performance across several tasks. The SGT shift count positively correlated with within-task performance for a two-item choice task tapping divergent thinking (Alternative Uses Task) but not for a twoitem choice task calling on convergent thinking (Anagram task). Multiple regression analyses revealed that, taken together, both the shift count and dwell length measures from the Alternative Uses Task explained a significant proportion of variance in measures of fluency, and originality, on a composite measure of the three independently-assessed creative tasks. Relations of SGTs to the Garden Design task were weaker, though shift count on the Alternative Uses Task was predictive of a composite measure of overall Garden Design quality. Taken together, these results highlight the promise of our new process-based measures to better chart the dynamically flexible processes supporting creative thinking and action.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Charting the contributions of cognitive flexibility to creativity: Self-guided transitions as a process-based index of creativity-related adaptivity

Koutstaal

2020

PLoS ONE

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“…Therefore, the assumption that analysis is primarily related to the problem space exploration, as it is often instructed by the prescriptive design literature, should be revisited in the context of team designing. Namely, this assumption goes beyond simple counting of instances where teams perform problem analysis versus instances where they perform solution analysis (this has already been addressed in one of the previous studies; please consult [43]). It instead correlates analysis (no matter if performed in the problem or solution space) with problem space exploration, meaning that analysis-intensive activity is also likely to be more intensive in terms of exploring the problem space (to the degree it can be observed in the design team's dialogue).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Revisiting Problem-Solution Co-Evolution in the Context of Team Conceptual Design Activity

et al. 2020

Self Cite

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The conventional prescriptive and descriptive models of design typically decompose the overall design process into elementary processes, such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. This study revisits some of the assumptions established by these models and investigates whether they can also be applied for modelling of problem-solution co-evolution patterns that appear during team conceptual design activities. The first set of assumptions concerns the relationship between performing analysis, synthesis, and evaluation and exploring the problem and solution space. The second set concerns the dominant sequences of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation, whereas the third set concerns the nature of transitions between the problem and solution space. The assumptions were empirically tested as part of a protocol analysis study of team ideation and concept review activities. Besides revealing inconsistencies in how analysis, synthesis, and evaluation are defined and interpreted across the literature, the study demonstrates co-evolution patterns, which cannot be described by the conventional models. It highlights the important role of analysis-synthesis cycles during both divergent and convergent activities, which is co-evolution and refinement, respectively. The findings are summarised in the form of a model of the increase in the number of new problem and solution entities as the conceptual design phase progresses, with implications for both design research and design education.

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“…However, there are also many design contexts in which group work is a key element and where responsibility for idea production and idea development is effectively shared (e.g. see Kohn & Smith, 2011;Martinec, Škec, Horvat, & Štorga, 2019). This is not addressed in the accounts we offer here and also not emphasised in many of the case studies conducted previously (but see Dogan & Nersessian, 2010;Cross, 2001).…”

Section: Limitations and Future Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Creativity and fixation in the real world: Three case studies of invention, design and innovation

Crilly

Firth

2019

Design Studies

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This paper reports on the design of three novel products: a hand saw, electrical plug and bicycle wheel. Each case study draws on interviews with the designers and analysis of their prototypes. The focus is on how the product ideas originated, how and why they changed and why those changes weren't made earlier. In emphasising the nature of creative work throughout long and complex projects, three themes are emphasised: (1) creative challenges and creative blocks can result from earlier breakthroughs (which makes them difficult to overcome); (2) multiple design spaces co-evolve at different levels of detail (not just simple problem-and solution-spaces); (3) those developing new ideas need to recognise and accept those ideas (not just generate and develop them).

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A state-transition model of team conceptual design activity

Cited by 15 publications

References 91 publications

Charting the contributions of cognitive flexibility to creativity: Self-guided transitions as a process-based index of creativity-related adaptivity

Charting the contributions of cognitive flexibility to creativity: Self-guided transitions as a process-based index of creativity-related adaptivity

Revisiting Problem-Solution Co-Evolution in the Context of Team Conceptual Design Activity

Creativity and fixation in the real world: Three case studies of invention, design and innovation

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