Juxtaposing Design Representations for Creativity

Abstract

This paper argues that the influence of design rationale on creativity is best achieved by concurrent use of scenarios, prototypes and models. A framework of cognitive affordances is introduced to discuss the merits and limitations of each representation. The paper concludes by discussing how different representations might complement each other in creative scenario-based design.Keywords: scenarios, prototypes, cognitive affordances, design representations. INTRODUCTIONIt is often argued that creative design is best supported by examples of good design, thought probes, and stimulating artifacts (Cross, 2000;Gaver, Beaver, & Benford, 2003). In contrast, the methodical engineering approach to design emphasizes a systematic process, models, and the reuse of design knowledge, criticizing less systematic approaches as "craft" (Dowell & Long, 1998). Design rationale may provide a middle ground between the two approaches as an easy-to-use notation that can stimulate creativity while preserving some of the generality and rigor of models. I will investigate the contributions that different design representations can make to the creative design process from the viewpoint of cognitive reasoning processes. The relative merits of design rationale, scenarios, models, and prototypes are investigated in terms of their roles in the design process and cognitive affordances.The integrated use of different representations will be illustrated by the scenario-based requirements analysis method (SCRAM; Sutcliffe & Ryan, 1997). SCRAM advocates a combination of design rationale, scenarios, and early prototypes as a means of effective requirements analysis and design exploration. More recently we have used a merge of SCRAM and scenario-based design (Carroll, 2002) with a similar combination of design representations in eScience health informatics domains (Sutcliffe et al., 2007). The following section of this paper describes the properties of different design representations. Next, I discuss how the representations can support creative reasoning, with the following section elaborating the theme by investigating cognitive affordances. Then I review how representations can be integrated into the design requirements discovery process. Integration is illustrated with the SCRAM method, followed by a brief review of other approaches to creative design support. The paper DESIGN REPRESENTATIONSThis section reviews the role of the more common design representations in creative design from a human-computer interaction (HCI) perspective and from the more analytic view of software engineering.