Happy summer all: I have not dropped by this list in a very long time. We do happily engage in numerous other discussion groups however the dominant dynamics here tend to be not really our cup of tea. Today I am happy in the direction of Victor to make this small contribution from our practice-based perspective.
All the best to Nigel Cross for his interesting view regarding how design research connects to the design methods movement as expressed in his 2007 editorial “Forty years of design research”. As practice leaders involved for years in the innovation methods movement we did notice a couple of cross-community hiccups there in Nigel’s depiction that are worthy of attention in the sense that left unnoted they tend to paint a false picture and leave a false impression among the readership of Design Studies.
Working across communities we often see applied creativity community developments misstated in design community writings and therefore widely misunderstood in that community.
Perhaps we should first acknowledge that the design community and the applied creativity community (also known as the CPS or Creative Problem Solving community) have historically been and remain two different entities with very different histories, timelines, milestones, knowledge, orientations, methods and heroes. Both remain very active today.
One hiccup in Nigel’s editorial was the distinction being drawn between “methodology books” and “creativity books” which is not accurate in the sense that the books he is referencing there are methodology oriented texts. Another Nigel misfire was the timeline depiction framed as “first” books appearing.
It might not be clear to everyone that the methodology movement in the applied creativity community did not begin in parallel with the 1962 design methods movement in the design community but rather preceded it.
The methodology oriented applied creativity book that Nigel makes reference to: Alex Osborn’s Applied Imagination was first published in 1953 and not 1963 as noted in Nigel’s editorial comments.
Applied Imagination was Osborn’s 4th book on the subject and all were methodology oriented.
Osborn’s How to Think Up was published in 1942.
Osborn’s Your Creative Power was published in 1948.
Osborn’s Wake Up Your Mind was published in 1952.
The book that Nigel was referencing: Osborn’s Applied Imagination was first published in 1953 and the revised edition was published in 1957. Nigel was apparently referencing the third revised edition of Applied Imagination which was published in 1963.
The first annual methods oriented conference in the applied creativity (CPS) community was held in 1955, known as CPSI (Creative Problem Solving Institute). It has been held nearly every year since and in June of 2014 had its 60th anniversary.
By 1959-1960 Alex Osborn and Sid Parnes had already developed and codified an experiencial methodology learning program which continued to evolve over forthcoming decades. Interconnected was both research and specific method frameworks that remain influential among CPS methodologists still today.
Osborn died in 1966 and shortly there-after the third generation of applied creativity methodology books began to appear in the applied creativity community, the most well known being Creative Behavior Guidebook by Sid Parnes in 1967. That book represented 15 plus years of method related learnings by Osborn, Parnes and their numerous associates within the applied creativity community. It is considered a landmark publication (designed on an IBM typewriter) in the applied creativity community.
From a methodology and codified method knowledge perspective there is no equivalent in the design methods movement.
As part of third generation activities Parnes founded the Journal of Creative Behavior in 1967. Working with various associates, Parnes went on to tweak and conduct research around the Osborn Parnes methodology as well as publish numerous other method oriented books including Creative Actionbook, 1976 and Guide to Creative Action, 1977.
Not always understood in the design community, suffice it to say that enormous methodology knowledge exists in the applied creativity community today and has existed there for decades.
Not well acknowledged in design education, or design journals most leading design oriented practices today have already incorporated methodology knowledge from the applied creativity methods movement. Use of the term: How Might We? (Parnes 1967) during upstream challenge framing being among the most well known examples. Those design oriented firms working upstream from product/service or experience briefs would typically be integrating multiple streams of methodology knowledge from the CPS community.
One other quick observation would be that today what we know as the innovation methods movement is different from and broader than the design methods movement that Nigel makes reference to in his “Forty years of design research” editorial.
Many involved in the innovation methods movement today don't come from design backgrounds and don't go to market as design professionals or design companies. (Designers are not the only folks in the innovation business.) The innovation methods movement now encompasses more then just design methods, which have historically been downstream in orientation.
Unlike the depiction that Nigel presents in his 2007 editorial we do not in the innovation methods movement today conflate design research with innovation methods development or with methods research. These are considered rather different subjects. Much of the methodology oriented research going on around innovation methods today is not being framed as design research.
Most innovation methodologies created after 2005 that are active in practice do incorporate some form of outbound innovation or design research as forms of human-centered, action-oriented insight generation.
We have not done a specific document count but all considered it seems likely that much more methodology oriented research literature exists today in the applied creativity arena than does design research focused on design methods. You can find examples of such research in the previously mentioned Journal of Creative Behavior founded by Parnes in 1967 and still published today.
Best of luck to all.
Have a good weekend.
Osborn, AF (1942) How to Think Up, New York, McGraw-Hill Book Co. London.
Osborn, AF (1948) Your Creative Power, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.
Osborn, AF (1952) Wake Up Your Mind, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.
Osborn, AF (1953) Applied Imagination, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. Revised edition, Scribner, 1957, 3rd edition, Scribner 1963.
Parnes, S, (1959) Instructors Manual for Semester Courses in Creative Problem Solving, Creative Education Foundation, Revised edition 1963, 3rd Revised Edition 1966.
Parnes,S, Noller,R, Biondi,A, (1967) Creative Behavior Guidebook, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.
Parnes, S, (1967) Creative Behavior Workbook, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.
Parnes, S, Noller, R, Biondi, A, (1976) Creative Actionbook, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.
Parnes, S, Noller, R, Biondi, A, (1977) Guide to Creative Action, Creative Education Foundation, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.
The Journal of Creative Behavior
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)2162-6057
Related for those interested:
Making Sense of “Why Design Thinking Will Fail”
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/making-sense-why-design-thinking-fail-gk-vanpatter
Making Sense of “Building Better Brainstorms”
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/making-sense-building-better-brainstorms-gk-vanpatter
Making Sense of “Creative Intelligence”
http://www.humantific.com/making-sense-of-creative-intelligence/
Making Sense of “What Killed the InfoGraphic?”
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/making-sense-what-killed-infographic-gk-vanpatter
Innovation Methods Mapping / Project Learnings Overview
Systemic Design Conference in Oslo, Norway, 2013
http://issuu.com/humantific/docs/oslo_presentation_methodsmap
ReThinking Wicked Problems (Part 1) (On academia.edu)
Unpacking Paradigms, Bridging Universes
GK VanPatter, J Conklin & M Basadur in Conversation,
NextD Journal Issue 28, 2007
http://tinyurl.com/lhmtx7s
Double Consciousness (On academia.edu)
Back to the future with John Chris Jones
GK VanPatter & John Chris Jones in Conversation
NextD Journal, Issue 26, 2006.
http://tinyurl.com/q3of3k6
GK VanPatter
Humantific
SenseMaking for ChangeMaking
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On Jul 17, 2015, at 10:21 AM, Margolin Victor <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Does anyone have a pdf of Nigel Cross's 2007 paper, Forty years of design research. Published in Design Studies 28 91). Nigel also gave a talk at the IADE conference in Lisbon some year ago. Does anyone know about a transcript of that talk/
> Victor Margolin
> Professor Emeritus of Design History
> Department of Art History
> University of Illinois, Chicago
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