Impact of technical information in magic-based inspiration tools on novice designers

Conjuring cognition: a review of educational magic-based interventions

“…Using the same design task, Haritaipan, Saijo & Mougenot (2018b) compared the impact of cards that just described the magical effects (e.g., appearance) with those that also presented methods to achieve those effects (e.g., expansible object, hologram). The findings suggested that the 'effect plus method' cards resulted in ideas that were significantly more feasible and flexible.…”

How professional designers use magic-based inspirations: development of a usage guideline and analysis of impact on design process

“…Technical version of the MiX cards is shown to be the most effective representation of magic effects set as it convinces the designers that magical effects might not be the absolute impossibility, and they were persuaded to think and generate ideas with open mind [16], which is a fundamental for flexible thinking [3], causing their design outcomes to be creative and provides pleasurable UX in the way that it is technically plausible. The analysis of all created ideas showed that with magic-based inspirations, designers came up with significantly a lot more product ideas that allow physical interactions, and less product ideas that allow only visual or audio interactions, which contributed to higher UX scores of the ideas [16]. Overall, the findings emphasized the usefulness of magic effects and the need of technical clues to assist designers to create 'practical and creative' ideas.…”

“…dream, imagination and fantasy) is suggested to be the source to creativity [22]. Combin-ing these two concepts, our previous studies have shown that magic effects (impossible phenomenon) can lead to novel product ideas which provides pleasurable user experiences (UX) for novice designers [15,16]. Moreover, this tool supports not only creativity but also technological knowledge to the designer, and led to product ideas with new physical interactions.…”

“…Based on these 15 magic effects, multiple versions of 'Magic in User Experience Design' (MiX) cards were developed, e.g. Magic sketch cards, Magic video cards, Magic precedents cards in multiple modalities, all of which has difference advantages to creativity and UX of product ideas [15,16]. Our findings suggested that the designers were invited to map magical effects in-to their ideas through analogical reasoning and thus to explore an unusual solution space, since 'magical thinking' is usually being neglected or considered as non-existed in this modern society [31].…”

“…In our most recent study, we proposed technical version of the MiX cards (Fig 1), consisting of the title, a description, a sketch of each magic effect on the front of the cards, and information of how each magic effect could be technically plausible on the back of the cards [16]. These technical clues were gathered from three sources: mechanical engineering field of knowledge, innovative products that gives magical user experiences, and from principles used by magicians.…”