On Tuesday, February 25, 2003, at 01:20 AM, Peter Burrows wrote:

"Why is a creative designer incompatible with participative design?
Perhaps it has something to do with the way creativity is manifested in
such a process..."
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Dear Peter and dear all,

I'm a little unsure Peter, as to whether the above from your post is
what you have written or what you reckon that Rosan has written. It was
the ... that confused me.
I checked Rosan's post and could only find:

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Rosan Chow wrote 24 02 03:
"Firstly, as described in David’s post, (David Durling 15 feb) the
personality traits that are found
associated with creativity include, ‘dominant’, "hostile’ and
‘impulsive’.
These traits seem to be so incompatible with our current thinking on
co-design, participatory design, user-centered design where designers
are
expected to be collaborative".
---------------

So Peter, I'm going to assume that the text above is yours, which is
very different to Rosan's text about collaborative design.

Surely you don't mean it when you say:
"Why is a creative designer incompatible with participative design?"

By saying that, you are giving many the notion that designers are
indeed difficult to work with, because they can only work on their own
and not in a collaborative environment.

This is just not the case. And to get back to David Durling's point,
that started this thread off:
--------------
David Durling wrote 15 feb 2003:
Re: How engineers think vs. how designers think
"Many of the replies to this thread have focused exclusively on
artefacts, process, or technology, without consideration of the person
doing the designing. The person has knowledge of designing, but is
also an individual with desires, preferences, and certain attitudes
towards creativity. In other words, they have a personality."
---------------

It is the personal resources and design contributions that each
participant brings with him / her to a collaborative design
environment, that play a role. It is not just a question as to how
creative one is or is not. It is the attitude of mind that others'
creative, communicative, design and human input can be shared and be
used to generate an understanding or renewed understanding of the
project and give those involved the means of making a richer synthesis
of the issues and collaborative input, towards the next iteration.

This demands a creative ability from all present, albeit a creativity
expressed in different ways. This is highly dependent on the
personality and makeup, both on a personal and a professional level of
those involved. So yes, I agree with David that personality does play a
major role with regard to creativity, both the personal way of relating
one's creativity to a design task and also the way one relates one's
creativity to the sharing environment of collaborative design.

My research leads me to believe that one can, on the one hand describe
a personal creative space and on the other a collaborative creative
space. Common to these two conceptual spaces is the dialogue that
occurs, between the designer and the task.
In the personal space the dialogue is often silent, bordering on the
meditative, if the designer is working alone, in that it takes place in
the mind of the designer. Yet at the same time it is participatory.
This might seem paradoxical, but I find Etienne Wenger's (Wenger 1998
pp 55- 56) description of participation very sympathetic:
"Participation refers to a process of taking part and also to the
relations with others that reflect this process. It suggests both
action and connection".

I know from my own design practice and that of other's, that a designer
is very capable of having a dialogue with a design task or concept and
be deeply involved in this creative process, whilst relating to say,
some users or use situation and refer to their needs whilst making
design decisions. This aspect of user centered design is, I feel,
"participatory design". Even though one is maybe working on one's own,
there is still a sense of negotiation with the issues and people
involved in the task, to name but a few.

Collaborative design is also participatory. It demands the same high
level of creative skills, but the designer has to now bring other
aspects of his/her creative and human abilities into play into a "real
time dialogue" with others This collaborative arena demands a sharing
and an acknowledgment of the resources that others bring with them and
a willingness to make a synthesis of common ideas. This negotiation
process is very creative - it has to be or else it will just end in
bickering or useless products.

So personality has a lot to do with the creative process, both on a
personal and a collaborative level.

My chief interest at the moment is the challenge of getting these
concepts across when teaching design students.
The students have a lot of preconceptions as to what creativity is, yet
hardly ever relate to the concept of creativity as a personal resource
that can be built on, by becoming more aware of their creative process.
It is often taken for granted. There David, I think we have a common
interest!
I find the students often seem to muddle up some of the different
aspect of the creative process.

The two I have identified - to keep it simple - (Sternberg 1988) are
the differences between problem solving creativity and artistic
creativity. I find that the students can basically come to a grinding
halt when developing their projects, because they are not aware of the
difference between the two.
I tend to regard the problem based creativity as dealing with the more
practical aspects of, for example an industrial design project. This
could be, technology, size, materials, function, interaction and
concept in general etc, as opposed to the more aesthetic aspects of a
task, shape, colour, surface qualities and interface. Now I know all
these areas are interrelated, but the students get locked or in a
double bind, because they tend to jump the gun and try to resolve both
areas of the product in one type of sketch or mockup.
I encourage the students to keep these two main areas of their project
or task apart, for a while, until they become clearer in their minds as
to the nature and possible knock on effect their decisions could have
to the rest of the concept. They can easily work out functional and
interaction issues using found materials that are representative of the
concept, as opposed to the aesthetics. And vice versa, work out
aesthetic issues around the concept, without having resolved all the
more functional or technological issues.
These two areas of the task have to be woven together further down the
line. The advantages to the students are many. But for me the main
advantage is that this way of approaching a design task, certainly the
initial phases of a design project, allows the students to have a
clearer idea as to what they are working on and being creative around.
The resultant clarity and of dealing with one thing at a time, gives
the students more room and confidence to reach decisions and make clear
cut choices. They learn to argue their case.

So Rosan, yes, design is a lot more than the creative process, but a
knowledge and understanding of one's own and others' creative
personality and process is to my mind, a good driver for both
professionals and students alike in producing good design solutions.

I started my research only being concerned with creativity in design. I
have since reformulated this to the personal and collaborative working
process of which creativity is just one aspect of the social nature of
this profession we call design.

Best regards,

Chris.

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References.

Sternberg, R. J. (1988). The Nature of creativity : contemporary
psychological perspectives (Cambridge ; New York, Cambridge University
Press).

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice : learning, meaning, and
identity
(Cambridge, U.K. ; New York, N.Y., Cambridge University Press).


-------------

from:

Chris Heape
Senior Researcher - Design Didactics / Design Practice
Mads Clausen Institute
University of Southern Denmark
Sønderborg
Denmark

http://www.mci.sdu.dk

Work:
tel: +45 6550 1671
e.mail: chris @mci.sdu.dk