The Conditions for Design Creativity

Andrea Conti (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences)

Nowadays, no objections arise in acknowledging both research and design activities as knowledge generators. According to Hauberg, the research process is similar to a design process. While in the former the researcher applies traditional methods to answer the research questions, in the latter the designer investigates new products of knowledge working with designer’s language, drawings and models, rather than written word.

Particularly, not long ago, design has been recognized as a mean to conduct research, in the form of ‘research by design’. With these new forms of inquiry, the act of designing becomes part of the research process opening up new possibilities for further studies.

Nonetheless, research by design, might risk to limit the variety of possibilities for knowledge creation. Design processes usually involve an abductive reasoning model, that encompasses all the phases of design thinking, including issues as irrationality, uncertainty and creativity. On the other hand, research by design implies forms of reasoning proper of a nomothetic research, that tries to rationalize the process providing systematic rules or methods for designing. The risk for research by design is to trivialize its purpose, comparing and treating it as a sort of natural science. If researchers succeed in harnessing a design process into a research-based design, providing rationally formed methods and tools, to imagine a machine carrying out a whole design process is far from being impossible (Cross,2001).

On one hand, design is a rational activity, a way of thinking that seeks to understand and systematize the design process. On the other, it is an inexplicable activity of our minds, creative and irrational. The field of inquiry of the research project attempts to fit in this binary perspective. Particularly, the project focuses on the process of design and on the concept of ‘idea generation’, considering both educational and professional spheres.