Case-Based Approach to Creative Design

摘要

We are studying and modeling creative design processes. Our goals are two-fold.One is to make intelligent, computer-based design assistants more creative (e.g., able to suggest unusual but useful solutions and to bring up important issues that might not have been considered otherwise). The other is to build computational models that help us understand human creativity. This will have implications for design education and suggest ways of enhancing the creativity of human designers. To gain insights into the knowledge and reasoning involved in creative design, we performed an exploratory study of student mechanical engineers engaged in a seven-week undergraduate design project. In this study, we observed a great deal of the design process, including informal team meetings (e.g., while choosing materials at a store) as well as official meetings. This has given us insights into the processes underlying many creative design activities, particularly the following. How designers generate multiple alternative views of a problem through situation assessment and reformulation. How problem constraints, evaluation criteria, and preferences gradually emerge or become refined as ideas are proposed and critiqued. How designers serendipitously recognize solutions to pending problems, often seeing new functions and purposes for common design pieces in the process.