Inspiration, images and design: an investigation of designers' information gathering strategies

Abstract

is an open access repository that collects the work of Arts et Métiers ParisTech researchers and makes it freely available over the web where possible.This is an author-deposited version published in: http://sam.ensam.eu Handle ID: .http://hdl.handle.net/10985/7602 To cite this version :Céline MOUGENOT, Carole BOUCHARD, Améziane AOUSSAT, Steve WESTERMANInspiration, images and design : an investigation of designers' information gathering strategiesJournal of Design Research -Vol. 7, n°4, p.331-351 -2008 Any correspondence concerning this service should be sent to the repository Abstract: Computational tools should efficiently support, and even enhance, designers' creativity. As a ground for such developments, design cognition studies aim at describing designers' mental strategies within the design process. So far, most researches have been focused on the idea generation phases, e.g. sketching activity, which is explicit enough to be observed and described. However, the early stages of design remain incompletely understood, while the informational phase is identified as a crucial step of the design process. In this context, our objective is to identify and evaluate inspirational information used by designers before generating ideas, and to describe how inspirational information is used. In this article, we report a two-part study (interviews and experimental protocol) carried out with professional designers. The main outcomes demonstrate that traditional and electronic resources are not used in the same way by designers. We also show that information gathering strategies are strongly influenced by designers' preference.Keywords: creativity; design; design cognition; design computing; images; information retrieval; inspiration; kansei; sectors of influence.Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Mougenot, C., Bouchard, C., Aoussat, A. and Westerman, S. (2008)

Defining the challenges for ecodesign implementation in companies: Development and consolidation of a framework

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“…To support this common practice among designers, design-dedicated softwares or interfaces have been developed to retrieve images, such as ProductWorld [14], CRAI Interface [7], Cabinet [8], TRENDS [12]...…”

Designing a graphical interface for creativity support tools for designers: a case study

“…Due to limitations of space, we have not outlined all of the functionalities in complete detail, but an evaluation of the utility of the functionalities and the descriptions can be found in the paper of Bouchard et al(2008). Specifically, Mougenot et al (2008) and Bonnardel and Zenasni (2010) have conducted several empirical experimentations to explore the impact of the TRENDS system in terms of a creativity support tool. The work of Bonnardel and Zenasni (2010) showed that inspirational images provided by the TRENDS system allowed experience designers to produce creative ideas under the influence of their evocation of new concepts.…”