Comparison of the degree of creativity in the design outcomes using different design methods

This work analyses the influence of several design methods on the degree of creativity of the design outcome. A design experiment has been carried out in which the participants were divided into four teams of three members, and each team was asked to work applying different design methods. The selected methods were Brainstorming, Functional Analysis, and SCAMPER method. The `degree of creativity' of each design outcome is assessed by means of a questionnaire offered to a number of experts and by means of three different metrics: the metric of Moss, the metric of Sarkar and Chakrabarti, and the evaluation of innovative potential. The three metrics share the property of measuring the creativity as a combination of the degree of novelty and the degree of usefulness. The results show that Brainstorming provides more creative outcomes than when no method is applied, while this is not proved for SCAMPER and Functional Analysis.

Assessment of the Relationships Among Design Methods, Design Activities, and Creativity

This paper presents an experimental study that was conducted to compare the results obtained from using different design methods (brainstorming (BR), functional analysis (FA), and SCAMPER) in design processes. The objectives of this work are twofold. The first was to determine whether there are any differences in the length of time devoted to the different types of activities that are carried out in the design process, depending on the method that is employed; in other words, whether the design methods that are used make a difference in the profile of time spent across the design activities. The second objective was to analyze whether there is any kind of relationship between the time spent on design process activities and the degree of creativity in the solutions that are obtained. Creativity evaluation has been done by means of the degree of novelty and the level of resolution of the designed solutions using creative product semantic scale (CPSS) questionnaire. The results show that there are significant differences between the amounts of time devoted to activities related to understanding the problem and the typology of the design method, intuitive or logical, that are used. While the amount of time spent on analyzing the problem is very small in intuitive methods, such as brainstorming and SCAMPER (around 8-9% of the time), with logical methods like functional analysis practically half the time is devoted to analyzing the problem. Also, it has been found that the amount of time spent in each design phase has an influence on the results in terms of creativity, but results are not enough strong to define in which measure are they affected. This paper offers new data and results on the distinct benefits to be obtained from applying design methods. DOI: 10.1115/1.4007362]