Imaginative design : forming productive ideas
Date
2002
Authors
Legg, Jonathan
University of Lethbridge. Faculty of Education
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Faculty of Education, 2002
Abstract
This project explores Imaginative Design--how Industrial Designers, using creative
imagination, produce their most creative ideas from conception to completion. It is a
naturalistic, qualitative study, and creation of a video documentary for educational
purposes. Inductive themes were gathered from videotaped interviews and related
pictures of four Industrial Designers that were arranged and edited on computer, then
copied to VHS tapes and DVD's. This documentary depicts a process of refinement and
evolution that is strongly informed by a corresponding external, physical visualization
and social influence. This process includes: completed design ideas and thoughts on
different forms of design creativity; external criteria from the clients' needs and wants to
personal and aesthetic principles like function, efficiency, economy, simplicity, and
craftsmanship; gathering ideas from both conscious, existent, and related sources and
unconscious, nonexistent, less related sources; using physical visualization to enhance
mental visualization; discovering, playing with, devaluing ideas in order to conceptualize;
choosing, noticing and isolating, and analyzing to edit ideas; and continual refinement
even after idea completion. Recommendations from the study are to use physical
visualization and social influences to inform the process, use a discriminating both/and
approach regarding issues like unconscious or conscious control and combination or
synthesis, and intentionally use "whole brain" models and creative thinking strategies.
Description
x, 96 leaves ; 29 cm. --
Keywords
Creative thinking , Industrial design , Industrial designers , Creative ability