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The Blank Page: Effects of Constraint on Creativity
Abstract
This dissertation is about how constraint—restrictions to freedom that limit and direct search—influences creativity. Freedom is often associated with creativity, yet recent work in the decision making literature suggests that too much freedom can be paralyzing when it provides too many choices. This dissertation examines how the extent of constraint imposed on a task, when conceptualized as a continuum, affects creative processes and outcomes. It employs a multi-method, multi-level approach through three studies.
Study 1 was a controlled laboratory experiment centered around a written product design task where constraint was manipulated by varying task instructions. A curvilinear effect of constraint on creativity was identified such that a moderate degree of constraint was more conducive to creativity than either a high or a low degree. These effects were not explained by alternative explanations such as time allocation during the task, or decreased intrinsic motivation.
Studies 2 and 3 examined the role of constraint in 43 new product development teams. Through quantitative analysis, Study 2 found that the degree of constraint that new product development teams voluntarily imposed on their projects at the beginning of the semester predicted the creativity of their product proposals more than ten weeks later. The results held up even when controlling for task conflict.
Study 3 examined the same 43 teams through a series of three multi-method case studies. Grounded-theory analysis gave qualitative support to the theory proposed in Chapter 2 and revealed several emergent themes that were not anticipated, namely: assumption-constrained creativity, uncovering latent conflict, and confirmation-constrained creativity. The study resulted in new predictions about how constraint affects creative teams, and a novel framework for conceptualizing creativity as a hypothesis-testing activity.
These findings suggest that while some amount of choice is important for encouraging creativity, too much can be counterproductive, which runs counter to many popular theories of creativity. This dissertation should provide encouragement to organizations that are institutionally embedded, have scarce resources, or are otherwise restricted.
... Specifically, the paper explores how dissimilar levels of task constraints affect actual inspiration search strategies. While constraints are not inexpedient in creative processes in general, having too many options to choose from might often be detrimental to creativity (Joyce 2009;Schwartz 2005). It would, therefore, seem plausible that the constrainedness (Onarheim 2012b) of a given creative task, i.e., how broadly/vaguely or narrowly/precisely the task is defined, will affect the actual inspiration search strategy. ...
... 58). This dual role of constraints has been underlined by several researchers (e.g., Elster 2000;Joyce 2009;McDonnell 2011;Onarheim and Wiltschnig 2010) and marks a break with previous research, which often saw design as the ability to meet specific sets of requirements. This prior understanding can be traced back to seminal work on rational problem-solving in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and computer science. ...
... Introducing such new constraints might even become decisive for the final design . Joyce (2009) summed up the role of constraints by saying that "while absolute constraint undermines creativity and intrinsic motivation, too little constraint is also counterproductive, resulting in decreased creativity and originality. Although some degree of choice has repeatedly been shown to be essential to creativity, the 'freedom' of the blank page can actually stifle creativity" (p. ...
Searching for sources of inspiration is central to creative design; however, we have limited knowledge of individual inspiration search strategies in response to varying levels of task constraints. We studied 39 high-school students’ inspiration search strategies using Google Images. Low task constrainedness led to divergent search marked by quick iterations, limited design task usage, and a heterogeneous image set. Intermediate constrainedness prompted in-depth, on-task exploration characterized by slow and careful iterations with more search result examination, extensive design task usage, and homogenous images. High constrainedness led to flexible bracketing with quick, flexible design task use, ending with heterogeneous images. Images from the intermediately and highly constrained conditions generated more ideas and were perceived as more inspiring (relative to low) in a new group of students. We discuss the idea of a ‘sweet spot’ of constrainedness in an inspiration search process in design and consider implications for design research and future work.
... 6,7 The term 'constraints' often implies restrictions on freedom and creativity, 8 but numerous researchers note that without conflicts and constraints, there can be no creativity. [9][10][11] Indeed, not only can contradictions enhance creativity, they are key elements for all creative activities. 12 While some types of contradictions can be highly limiting for creativity, 13 without contradictions and constraints, there are no problems to resolve and thus no potential for creativity. ...
... A number of conflicts and constraints exist in any design project based on limitations or contradictions regarding what can or cannot be done in the design process and the aims that the design should fulfil. 11,14 Product design is typically severely constrained, requiring designers to meet a multitude of often conflicting requirements both during conceptual design and when resolving problems. However, situations that are genuinely over-constrained, in which hard constraints are in conflict, are less common than situations in which conflicting constraints can be prioritised and relaxed. ...
... 8,21 This duality might appear as counterintuitive, 22 and the focus of the creativity literature seems to be on freedom rather than on constraints. Joyce 11 reported that there has been relatively little empirical work on the effects of conflicting constraints on creative behaviour, with some notable exceptions. [23][24][25][26] Joyce 11 noted that some researchers stated that problems defined too vaguely can lead to confusion, while other authors claimed that contradictions can help focus creative efforts 27,28 and lead to creative breakthroughs. ...
Without creativity in design, there is no potential for innovation. This article investigates the role of contradictions in enhancing creativity in product design. Based on the inventive principles of the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving, this article presents a novel design method by integrating technical and physical contradiction analysis methods into the conceptual design activities of new product development. Although the importance of innovative design is widely recognised, there is a lack of systematic and effective design-thinking processes that can cover all conceptual design activities. To address this gap, this study presents a clear problem-solving model to aid innovative product design based on the contradiction-oriented concept. A case study is employed to illustrate the proposed method, and the results demonstrate that it can help designers produce more creative outcomes in product design.
... The significance of meaning-making is also key to research carried out by Tin who argues that 'in a creative language task which requires learners to communicate about new meanings… [they] must somehow innovate and complexify their language, by re-analysing and combining known utterances and structures to create new ideas and forms' (Tin, 2012, 179). There are studies which show specifically that creative language play can motivate learners to make use of more complex and ambitious grammatical constructions (Kim and Kellogg, 2007) in a way which may be lacking from non-creative tasks (Joyce, 2009). This reflects the findings explored above from the studies of creative writing in the Latin classroom, which found that students' output tended to be more sophisticated and grammatically complex in creative tasks. ...
... To facilitate this, in every lesson I would provide a creative prompt and a set of grammatical constructions to be included in students' work. It has been found that 'too much freedom… can limit rather than enable the exploration and transformation of learner language' (Tin, 2012, 178) and can in fact have a 'paralyzing' effect (Joyce, 2009). By providing prompts I was providing a certain level of scaffolding for students. ...
This research aims to explore the ways in which creative writing may be used as a pedagogical tool in the Latin language classroom, in particular how creative writing may benefit students in Latin prose composition. The lesson sequence delivered as part of this research was undertaken in an academically-selective, independent coeducational school in an affluent, inner-metropolitan area. The sequence of four 60-minute lessons formed part of the language (as opposed to literature) portion of timetabled Latin lessons for a group of nine Year 12 students (aged 16–17). As part of their language lessons, the students had been following a course of study in prose composition based upon Andrew Leigh's (2019) Latin Prose Composition: A Guide from GCSE to A Level and Beyond ¹ . The lesson sequence was intended to build on this work by making use of, and thus consolidating, grammatical constructions and vocabulary which the students had already encountered in the context of prose composition. The sequence was designed in such a way that students were required to apply their linguistic knowledge in new and creative ways. Students' responses to the various activities were positive and they expressed enjoyment in the methodologies.
... However, Holeman et al. [25] highlight some of the difficulties of co-design in ICTD settings, from the alienness of the materials typically used to increased power differentials between the researcher-designers and the end user-designers. Being cognizant of these challenges, particularly the alienness of new materials, and because we were asking participants to co-design alongside us, using technologies they had never encountered, we also considered the blank page problem [29], which occurs when no limitations or expectations are placed on creativity. This is often called the paradox of choice, where too much freedom in creative choice can be overwhelming [29]. ...
... Being cognizant of these challenges, particularly the alienness of new materials, and because we were asking participants to co-design alongside us, using technologies they had never encountered, we also considered the blank page problem [29], which occurs when no limitations or expectations are placed on creativity. This is often called the paradox of choice, where too much freedom in creative choice can be overwhelming [29]. Garfield [22] states that a lack of boundaries does not necessarily liberate creative processes but enslaves them. ...
... Teachers have the possibility to create the educational material to be included in ComicsCLIL easily, quickly and smoothly while making it fully educational. On the one hand, in fact, teachers can use predefined textual elements that constitute a way to support the children in the language task, representing a scaffolding tool for language learning (Sharma & Hannafin, 2007) while (Joyce, 2009). On the other hand, teachers can, as well, add graphical elements that can facilitate children in being focused also on the content, essential for teaching CLIL, for creating their narratives. ...
... On the contrary, fewer preferred (4) drawing their own comics as they felt the need to personalize their graphical content. Still, they mentioned that visual elements could facilitate the narratives structure as 'blank page syndrome' (Joyce, 2009) could be avoided. Regarding the comics' production, it emerged that stories composed digitally were more structured, meaningful and coherent that the non-digital one. ...
This work explores how comic-based digital storytelling can support children and teachers in combining foreign language and content teaching in the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) framework. In particular, we focus on investigating three specific aspects: (1) the use of digital storytelling in terms of collaboration, engagement and ease of use, (2) the adoption of comic-based digital storytelling in the CLIL framework, and (3) the benefits and limitations in using digital storytelling in comparison to a paper-based version. In order to investigate these aspects, we develop a case study in a primary school in Italy. A class of 18 children and 2 teachers used a digital tool, named ComicsCLIL, with the aim of creating digital narratives in the CLIL framework. The results provide some evidences that comicbased digital storytelling can be a beneficial educational tool for approaching CLIL lessons. It emerged, in fact, that digital storytelling, as supported by ComicsCLIL, can facilitate this practice by being engaging, easy to use, fully educational while considering the collaborative aspect.
... These results, however, also failed to show a significant main effect of the educational intervention group for either opportunistic or restrictive DfAM emphasis. and complex design activity could possibly provide participants with more opportunities to apply their learning of DfAM techniques [96]. ...
... This demonstrates the need for greater emphasis on opportunistic DfAM principles in DfAM education. We must, however, be careful in drawing these inferences, as this result could also be attributed to the general simplicity of the design challenge [96], as well as the analysis of the final design outcomes only. Figure 6 Summary of CAT scores for each metric (mean ± std. ...
Additive Manufacturing (AM) offers unique capabilities, yet inherent limitations due to the layered fabrication of parts. Despite the newfound design freedom and increased use of AM, limited research has investigated how knowledge of the AM processes affects the creativity of students’ ideas. This study investigates this gap through a study with 343 participants recruited from a junior-level mechanical engineering design course. The participants were exposed to three variations in design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) education: (1) no DfAM, (2) restrictive DfAM, and (3) opportunistic and restrictive (dual) DfAM education. The effects of these three interventions were measured through differences in (1) participants’ self-reported use of DfAM in a design challenge and (2) expert assessment of the creativity of the outcomes from said design challenge. The results indicated that variations in DfAM content did not result in differences in the participants’ self-reported use of either opportunistic or restrictive DfAM. However, while variations in the content had no effect on the creativity of the participants’ design outcomes, teaching both opportunistic and restrictive DfAM did result in the generation of designs with greater AM technical goodness–a novel and significant finding in our study. The results of this study highlight the need for DfAM educational interventions that encourage students to not only learn about but also integrate both opportunistic and restrictive concepts effectively into their creative design process, so that they generate innovative products that leverage the design freedom enabled by AM yet address the limitations inherent in the process.
... The role of the design task characteristics, particularly the constraints, has also been explored in the context of creativity [82]. The abstraction and specificity of the task have been shown to influence the creativity of idea generation. ...
... This result suggests that including explicit objectives and constraints in the design task encourages better exploration of the solution space, with participants generating a diverse set of solutions. This result supports previous findings, where a moderate set of constraints have been shown to correlate with greater creative production [82]. The participants could possibly be employing the various opportunistic DfAM concepts to find innovative techniques to improve the functionality of their solutions, as well as meet the requirements of the design task. ...
The integration of additive manufacturing (AM) processes in many industries has led to the need for AM education and training, particularly on design for AM (DfAM). To meet this growing need, several academic institutions have implemented educational interventions, especially project- and problem-based, for AM education; however, limited research has explored how the choice of the problem statement influences the design outcomes of a task-based AM/DfAM intervention. This research explores this gap in the literature through an experimental study with 222 undergraduate engineering students. Specifically, the study compared the effects of restrictive and dual (restrictive and opportunistic) DfAM education, when introduced through either a simple or complex design task. The effects of the intervention were measured through (1) changes in participant DfAM self-efficacy, (2) participants’ self-reported emphasis on DfAM, and (3) the creativity of participants’ design outcomes. The results show that the complexity of the design task has a significant effect on the participants’ self-efficacy with, and their self-reported emphasis on, certain DfAM concepts. The results also show that the complex design task results in participants generating ideas with greater uniqueness compared to the simple design task. These findings highlight the importance of the chosen problem statement on the outcomes of a DfAM educational intervention, and future work is also discussed.
... The role of the design task characteristics, particularly the constraints, has also been explored in the context of creativity [82]. The abstraction and specificity of the task have been shown to influence the creativity of idea generation. ...
... This result suggests that the complex design task better encourages the exploration of the solution space, with participants generating a diverse set of solutions. This result supports previous findings, where a moderate set of constraints have been shown to correlate with greater creative production [82]. The participants could possibly be employing the various opportunistic DfAM concepts to find innovative techniques to improve the functionality of their solutions, as well as meet the requirements of the design task. ...
The integration of additive manufacturing (AM) processes in many industries has led to the need for AM education and training, particularly on design for AM (DfAM). To meet this growing need, several academic institutions have implemented educational interventions, especially project-and problem-based, for AM education; however, limited research has explored how the choice of the problem statement influences the design outcomes of a task-based AM/DfAM intervention. This research explores this gap in the literature through an experimental study with 222 undergraduate engineering students. Specifically, the study compared the effects of restrictive and dual (restrictive and opportunistic) DfAM education, when introduced through either a simple or complex design task. The effects of the intervention were measured through (1) changes in student DfAM self-efficacy, (2) student self-reported emphasis on DfAM, and (3) the creativity of student AM designs. The results show that the complexity of the design task has a significant effect on the participants' self-efficacy with, and self-reported emphasis on, certain DfAM concepts. The results also show that the complex design task results in participants generating ideas with greater median uniqueness compared to the simple design task. These findings highlight the importance of the chosen problem statement on the outcomes of a DfAM educational intervention, and future work is also discussed.
... By definition, creative constraints affect creative agency, but not necessarily in a negative way. They play a dual role, both limiting and enabling creativity (Biskjaer et al., 2011;Boden, 2010;Elster, 2000;Isaak and Just, 1995;Joyce, 2009;McDonnell, 2011;Negus and Pickering, 2004;Onarheim and Wiltschnig, 2010;Reitman, 1964;Stokes, 2008). Margaret Boden (2004) described constraints as a means of mapping "a territory of structural possibilities which can be explored and perhaps transformed to give another one". ...
... An important empirical contribution about the link between constraints and creativity was provided by Caneel Joyce (2009). She studied the role of task instructions in product design and found that creativity relates to different degrees of constraint in an inverted U-shaped curve. ...
This thesis focuses on the design of interactive digital tools for professionals in graphic design and contemporary choreography. These practitioners employ personal principles and methods that constrain and guide their creative process. I argue that to build powerful software tools to support their practice, we need to let them interactively define and manipulate their own set of creative constraints. I introduce two tools that illustrate this approach. StickyLines provides visual representations of alignment and distribution constraints in layout design to better match users’ needs. Knotation allows choreographers to sketch their ideas and make them interactive, letting them represent constraints, movement, or a combination. I show that although their creative product is fundamentally different in nature, these professionals’ creative process can be addressed with a common strategy: Allowing users to create interactive substrates that articulate content and constraints.
... Another condition needed to facilitate creativity in writing tasks is constraints. Joyce [13] defines constraints as any limitation on freedom and choice such as rules, boundaries, and scarcity. Constraints are two sided: while one element of the constraint inhibits the search in particular parts of the problem space, the other element promotes the search in other areas of the problem space [14]. ...
... The second condition which was imposed to facilitate creativity was constraint. As mentioned before, a constraint is a limitation on freedom and choice such as rules, boundaries, and scarcity [13]. It was also stated that one element of the constraint prevents searching in particular areas of the problem space, while the other promotes searching in other parts of the problem space [14]. ...
... For example, there is anecdotal evidence across many domains that imposing length constraints can shape and improve the resulting writing: academic authors edit papers to fit a page limit, poets adhere to a prescribed verse form or rhyme scheme, and journalists edit articles to fit a word count limit (McPhee 2015). More broadly, research in several fields-spanning product design (Joyce 2009;Moreau and Dahl 2005), process management (Fritscher and Pigneur 2009), and education (Hennessey 1989)-suggests that having too much freedom can be paralyzing (epitomized by the feeling of staring at a blank sheet of paper), and that there is a sweet spot with just the right amount of constraints. ...
... Do length constraints steer users towards editing their content in a useful way on social media, or does additional space allow for more creative and engaging content? Answering this question involves resolving two competing hypotheses: H1 Imposing constraints has a positive effect on creativity, influencing users to create succinct content that is more likely to be appealing to others (Joyce 2009). H2 Relaxing constraints provides users more space for expressing opinion and allows for more potentially interesting content. ...
It is often thought that constraints affect creative production, both in terms of form and quality. Online social media platforms frequently impose constraints on the content that users can produce, limiting the range of possible contributions. Do these restrictions tend to push creators towards producing more or less successful content? How do creators adapt their contributions to fit the limits imposed by social media platforms? In this work, we conduct a matched observational study to answer these questions. On November 7, 2017, Twitter changed the maximum allowable length of a tweet from 140 to 280 characters, significantly altering its signature constraint. In our studies we compare tweets with nearly or exactly 140 characters before the change to tweets of the same length posted after the change. This setup enables us to characterize how users alter their tweets to fit the constraint and how this affects their tweets' success. We find that in response to a length constraint, users write more tersely, use more abbreviations and contracted forms, and use fewer definite articles. Also, although in general tweet success increases with length, we find initial evidence that tweets made to fit the 140 character constraint tend to be more successful than similar length tweets written when the constraint was removed, suggesting that the length constraint improved tweet quality.
... However, the constraints in post length have shown mixed results about information quality posted on Twitter. Some scholars (Gligoric, Anderson, & West, 2018;Joyce, 2009) found that restrictive character limits enable messages more creative and more appealing to others. Other scholars found evidence that supports negative effects of constraints in length on discussion (Jaidka, Zhou, & Lelkes, 2019;Oz, Zheng, & Chen, 2018). ...
... Moreover, participants commented that the Assembly Assistant was useful in "generating an initial configuration of puzzle pieces to start working with (P1)". This aids in combating the "blank canvas syndrome (P6)", a common occurrence at the onset of a creative activity [23]. In Figure 9b, P10 wanted his video game character to look like Superman flying. ...
... Constrain the Project Space. Research in creativity and engineering design points to the dual relationship between creative output and problem constraints [12]. As such, the aim of this characteristic is to encourage flexible project spaces that strike a balance between over defined and over ambiguous project statements. ...
... Based on our content analysis of the whiteboards and student survey data, we observed evidence that templates provide an essential starting point and re-starting point for collaboration. The template appears to provide initial creative constraints [46,55] that help students avoid fixation related to the limitless possibilities of the whiteboard and 'blank page' effect [28]. In addition to this starting point, templates also model an expert process that is easy to follow and which 'grounds' [10,16] the team's communication, even between designers who have not worked together previously or who have different levels of design experience. ...
Online whiteboards are becoming a popular way to facilitate collaborative design work, providing a free-form environment to curate ideas. However, as templates are increasingly being used to scaffold contributions from non-experts designers, it is crucial to understand their impact on the creative process. In this paper, we present the results from a study with 114 students in a large introductory design course. Our results confirm prior findings that templates benefit students by providing a starting point, a shared process, and the ability to access their own work from previous steps. While prior research has criticized templates for being too rigid, we discovered that using templates within a free-form environment resulted in visual patterns of free-form curation where concepts were spatially organized, clustered, color-coded, and connected using arrows and lines. We introduce the concept of 'Free-form Templates' to illustrate how templates and free-form curation can be synergistic.
... The length limit can be thought of as a constraint that determines the format of the content that can be produced. Such constraints are of interest to scholars since they are often thought to have a positive impact on the quality of produced creative content [9,26,35,43,53,56]. ...
The design of online platforms is both critically important and challenging, as any changes may lead to unintended consequences, and it can be hard to predict how users will react. Here we conduct a case study of a particularly important real-world platform design change: Twitter's decision to double the character limit from 140 to 280 characters to soothe users' need to "cram" or "squeeze" their tweets, informed by modeling of historical user behavior. In our analysis, we contrast Twitter's anticipated pre-intervention predictions about user behavior with actual post-intervention user behavior: Did the platform design change lead to the intended user behavior shifts, or did a gap between anticipated and actual behavior emerge? Did different user groups react differently? We find that even though users do not "cram" as much under 280 characters as they used to under 140 characters, emergent "cramming" at the new limit seems to not have been taken into account when designing the platform change. Furthermore, investigating textual features, we find that, although post-intervention "crammed" tweets are longer, their syntactic and semantic characteristics remain similar and indicative of "squeezing". Applying the same approach as Twitter policy-makers, we create updated counterfactual estimates and find that the character limit would need to be increased further to reduce cramming that re-emerged at the new limit. We contribute to the rich literature studying online user behavior with an empirical study that reveals a dynamic interaction between platform design and user behavior, with immediate policy and practical implications for the design of socio-technical systems.
... The length limit can be thought of as a constraint that determines the format of the content that can be produced. Such constraints are of interest to scholars since they are often thought to have a positive impact on the quality of produced creative content [9,26,35,43,53,56]. ...
The design of online platforms is both critically important and challenging, as any changes may lead to unintended consequences, and it can be hard to predict how users will react. Here we conduct a case study of a particularly important real-world platform design change: Twitter's decision to double the character limit from 140 to 280 characters to soothe users' need to ''cram'' or ''squeeze'' their tweets, informed by modeling of historical user behavior. In our analysis, we contrast Twitter's anticipated pre-intervention predictions about user behavior with actual post-intervention user behavior: Did the platform design change lead to the intended user behavior shifts, or did a gap between anticipated and actual behavior emerge? Did different user groups react differently? We find that even though users do not ''cram'' as much under 280 characters as they used to under 140 characters, emergent ``cramming'' at the new limit seems to not have been taken into account when designing the platform change. Furthermore, investigating textual features, we find that, although post-intervention ''crammed'' tweets are longer, their syntactic and semantic characteristics remain similar and indicative of ''squeezing''. Applying the same approach as Twitter policy-makers, we create updated counterfactual estimates and find that the character limit would need to be increased further to reduce cramming that re-emerged at the new limit. We contribute to the rich literature studying online user behavior with an empirical study that reveals a dynamic interaction between platform design and user behavior, with immediate policy and practical implications for the design of socio-technical systems.
... One framework that may resolve this controversy is the creativity literature's constraint theory. Constraints are generally defined as externally imposed factors that limit the potential solutions (Joyce, 2009;Medeiros et al., 2014). These requirements may be explicitly imposed, such as a given budget or a goal, or perceived, such that those working on the creative problem believe that a certain expectation is in place. ...
The pervasiveness of unethical actions paired with the rising demand for creativity in organizations has contributed to an increased interest in how ethicality and creativity relate. However, there are mixed findings on whether these two fundamental pillars of the workplace relate positively, negatively, or not at all. To provide an empirical consensus to this debate, we study the directional effects of ethicality on creativity by employing meta-analytic techniques. Specifically, a series of meta-regressions, moderated meta-regressions, and individual subgroup analyses of moderators investigated the nuances of the ethicality-creativity relationship. Using a random-effects model, a quantitative review of 278 effects across 23 articles revealed that ethicality positively related to creativity. We further probed how each domain of ethicality (i.e., ethical decision-making, ethical leadership, ethical culture, ethical thought) related to creativity; the effect of ethicality on creativity remained positive, but was no longer significant. Additionally, to expand our understanding of this relationship, we offer theoretical and empirical accounts of five factors that moderate the positive association between ethicality and creativity: ethicality and creativity domains and measurement, sample culture, study characteristics, and sample characteristics. Theoretical and practical insights regarding these relationships are discussed.
... As previously discussed, many of the challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic are urgent and have complex functional and regulatory requirements (e.g., face We hypothesize that problems defined with urgent and complex requirements (e.g., face masks) will lead to the generation of solutions with higher DfAM utilization and creativity compared to problems defined with simpler and less urgent requirements (e.g., door openers). This hypothesis is based on prior work (e.g., see [24], [26], [27], [30]) suggesting that designers presented with problems of moderate to high complexity -comprising explicit objectives and constraints -generated solutions that were more creative and better met the requirements of the problem. Furthermore, this hypothesis is informed by prior work (e.g., see [28], [31]) suggesting the role of external motivation and problem urgency in encouraging the generation of creative solutions. ...
Designers from around the world have proposed numerous engineering design solutions for problems related to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of which leverage the rapid prototyping and manufacturing capabilities of additive manufacturing (AM). While some of these solutions are motivated by complex and urgent requirements (e.g., face masks), others are motivated by simpler and less urgent needs (e.g., hands-free door openers). Previous research suggests that problem definition influences the creativity of solutions generated for it. In this study, we investigate the relationship between the definition of problems related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the characteristics of AM solutions that were openly shared for these problems. Specifically, we analyze 26 AM solutions spanning three categories: (1) hands-free door openers (low complexity problem), (2) face shields (moderate complexity problem), and (3) face masks (high complexity problem). These designs were compared on (1) DfAM utilization, (2) manufacturability (i.e., build time, cost, and material usage), and (3) creativity. We see that the solutions designed for the high complexity problem, i.e., face masks, were least suitable for AM. Moreover, we see that solutions designed for the moderate complexity problem, i.e., face shields, had the lowest build time, build cost, and material consumption. Finally, we observe that the problem definition did not relate to the creativity of the AM solutions. In light of these findings, designers must sufficiently emphasize the AM suitability and manufacturability of their solutions when designing for urgent and complex problems in rapid response situations.
... However, creativity is not unrelated to the understanding of the design space. Understanding what is available as a designer with the awareness of the constraints that exist in the problem space is an important aspect for creativity (Joyce, 2009;Rosso, 2014). We believe that fostering a better understanding of the design space through supporting design exploration has a positive impact on the creativity in a design task. ...
Context: Exploring the design space is an important process in a design task. In this study, we considered design space exploration for the learners in vocational education and training (VET). The goal of the study was to investigate how they explore the design space while focusing on the effect of a graph-like interface on the learner’s understanding of the design space. With florists as the target profession, we investigated how the apprentices explore design variations, what they would gain from such activity, and how we can support this process. Approach: We developed a web application called BloomGraph that allows learners to explore design variations. It provides a graph-based interface that enables the systematic variation of design. Using the BloomGraph application, we conducted an experimental study with 44 florist apprentices in Switzerland to investigate the effect of the graph-based interface which provides a structured way of exploring the design space. The experimental group was given the graph-based interface to explore design variations while the control group had a linear-based interface. We compared them in terms of the number of bouquets explored, time of exploration, diversity of bouquets explored, and the learning gain in terms of the understanding of the design space measured using pre and post-tests. We also analyzed the strategies adopted by the participants for the graph navigation and the visual exploration behavior using the eye gaze data. Findings: Our analysis shows that the graph-based interface fosters a better understanding of the size of the design space and more efficient navigation towards a goal design in terms of the number of intermediate designs but with longer exploration of each intermediate design compared to the linear-based interface. Regarding the behavioral patterns in graph exploration, the participants who showed more strategic behavior in the design choices acquired a better understanding of the design space. Additionally, we trained a model that predicts the next choice of a learner using eye tracking data. It provides a reasonable accuracy that opens new possibilities for future studies.Conclusion: The findings of this study support the feasibility of design space exploration as a digital activity for VET learners and show how the learners can benefit from it. The contribution of the paper includes the validation of the idea with florist apprentices and the demonstration of how the process can be supported using a structured interface and the learner behavior analysis. This paper shows how a design exploration activity can provide an added value in the learning of an apprentice in a design-related VET system.
... It might be that complexity of dealing with sustainability tends to impede creativity of decision-makers, as research has shown that it takes an enormous amount of effort to choose a path when decision makers have excessive choice. At the same time, an undermining of creativity and the freedom of choice was reported, especially when criteria used to evaluate alternatives are purely utilitarian in nature (Gustafson, 2013, Joyce, 2009, Chua and Iyengar, 2008. However, decision-makers choose among alternatives through creative adaptation processes: the more the environment is complex and unstable the more are change and decisions requiring a creative way by synthetizing multiple logics (MacKay and Chia, 2013, Jay, 2013, Battilana and Casciaro, 2012. ...
... It might be that complexity of dealing with sustainability tends to impede creativity of decision-makers, as research has shown that it takes an enormous amount of effort to choose a path when decision makers have excessive choice. At the same time, an undermining of creativity and the freedom of choice was reported, especially when criteria used to evaluate alternatives are purely utilitarian (Chua and Iyengar, 2008;Gustafson, 2013;Joyce, 2009). However, decision-makers choose among alternatives through creative adaptation processes: the more the environment is complex and unstable the more are change and decisions requiring a creative way by synthetising multiple logics (Battilana and Casciaro, 2012;Jay, 2013;MacKay and Chia, 2013). ...
... Moreover, Amabile, Conti, Coon, Lazenby, and Herron (1996) discussed many contextual and scenario-based factors that affect performance in creative manners, for example, organizational climate (Amabile & Gryskiewicz, 1989). Joyce (2009) provided inclusive research on how creative developments have an effect on creative outcomes in the presence of intrusions. However, basic research on creative performance is subtle (Bouzari & Karatepe, 2020;Christensen-Salem et al., 2020). ...
The value of creative differentiation reduces the risk of operational inefficiencies and service breakdowns. The core purpose of the research is to identify antecedents, which are impacting and enhancing creative performance of public healthcare officials in Pakistan. The exigent urgency to ensure creative performance of healthcare officials is complicated due to the government's neglected attention and reduced spending toward public healthcare. The study offers empirical evidence of 331 public healthcare officials to unveil the positive mediation effect of innovation climate on the relationship between inclusive climate and health official's creative performance in Pakistan. Moreover, theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.
... It might be that complexity of dealing with sustainability tends to impede creativity of decision-makers, as research has shown that it takes an enormous amount of effort to choose a path when decision makers have excessive choice. At the same time, an undermining of creativity and the freedom of choice was reported, especially when criteria used to evaluate alternatives are purely utilitarian in nature (Gustafson, 2013, Joyce, 2009, Chua and Iyengar, 2008. However, decision-makers choose among alternatives through creative adaptation processes: the more the environment is complex and unstable the more are change and decisions requiring a creative way by synthetizing multiple logics (MacKay and Chia, 2013, Jay, 2013, Battilana and Casciaro, 2012. ...
Small businesses are in search for business models that balance the three pillars of sustainability (economy, environment, society) to successfully compete in increasingly driving-out markets. They often lack resources for comprehensive strategic sustainability screening and business model redesign. Considering their value for economy and society, support for SME´s sustainability orientation is needed. A two-step research allowed to develop a sustainability navigating tool that enables and motivates wineries to strategically assess their business models in regards to sustainability. First step of the study consisted of deriving appropriate criteria and measurements. Second step comprised a profiling of pilot wineries accompanied by knowledge exchange of participants. The tool fosters transparency and nurtures innovation: interaction with peers and experts reward for realized and motivate for additional innovative measures to increase sustainability. The obvious knowledge gap that refrains sustainability implementation of SME can be overcome by providing framework that assess and visualize sustainability performance.
... Sometimes, adding constraints can also be conducive to creativity. Research has shown that too many choices can overstrain the user and hence, a limitation of sources is preferable at times (Joyce, 2009;Rosso, 2014). ...
Work and study environments that facilitate creative design processes—so called creative spaces—have gained an increased interest in the past years. The question if, and if yes how the physical environment could support designerly activities, has attracted the attention of design schools, startups, and global companies. This PhD project contributes to this emerging field by providing a systemic investigation of the topic from different angles. The first part of this thesis explores the topic through four empirical studies, in order to gain a broad understanding of creative work and study environments. The second part pursues a practice-based design science approach that consolidates the findings in a workshop concept and a set of tangible artifacts to support co-creation for designing creative work environments.
... Creativity and constraints. Perhaps counterintuitively, research across several fields, such as product design, process management, and education, suggests that the presence of a constraint (limited time, money, or some other resource) is beneficial [19,23,27,38,40]. In particular, length constraints are often thought to have a positive impact on the quality of content. ...
In online communities, where billions of people strive to propagate their messages, understanding how wording affects success is of primary importance. In this work, we are interested in one particularly salient aspect of wording: brevity. What is the causal effect of brevity on message success? What are the linguistic traits of brevity? When is brevity beneficial, and when is it not? Whereas most prior work has studied the effect of wording on style and success in observational setups, we conduct a controlled experiment, in which crowd workers shorten social media posts to prescribed target lengths and other crowd workers subsequently rate the original and shortened versions. This allows us to isolate the causal effect of brevity on the success of a message. We find that concise messages are on average more successful than the original messages up to a length reduction of 30--40%. The optimal reduction is on average between 10% and 20%. The observed effect is robust across different subpopulations of raters and is the strongest for raters who visit social media on a daily basis. Finally, we discover unique linguistic and content traits of brevity and correlate them with the measured probability of success in order to distinguish effective from ineffective shortening strategies. Overall, our findings are important for developing a better understanding of the effect of brevity on the success of messages in online social media.
... Creativity and constraints. Perhaps counterintuitively, research across several fields, such as product design, process management, and education, suggests that the presence of a constraint (limited time, money, or some other resource) is beneficial [19,23,27,38,40]. In particular, length constraints are often thought to have a positive impact on the quality of content. ...
In online communities, where billions of people strive to propagate their messages, understanding how wording affects success is of primary importance. In this work, we are interested in one particularly salient aspect of wording: brevity. What is the causal effect of brevity on message success? What are the linguistic traits of brevity? When is brevity beneficial, and when is it not? Whereas most prior work has studied the effect of wording on style and success in observational setups, we conduct a controlled experiment, in which crowd workers shorten social media posts to prescribed target lengths and other crowd workers subsequently rate the original and shortened versions. This allows us to isolate the causal effect of brevity on the success of a message. We find that concise messages are on average more successful than the original messages up to a length reduction of 30-40%. The optimal reduction is on average between 10% and 20%. The observed effect is robust across different subpopulations of raters and is the strongest for raters who visit social media on a daily basis. Finally, we discover unique linguistic and content traits of brevity and correlate them with the measured probability of success in order to distinguish effective from ineffective shortening strategies. Overall, our findings are important for developing a better understanding of the effect of brevity on the success of messages in online social media.
... However, these studies turned up conflicting findings: on the one hand, Papacharissi (2004) reported that longer messages posted in political discussions were significantly more uncivil than shorter messages. Other publications have argued that Twitter's character limit constraints can encourage individual creativity and improve content quality (Gligorić, Anderson, & West, 2018;Joyce, 2009). On the other hand, Oz, Zheng, and Chen (2018) found that shorter messages on Twitter were more uncivil, more impolite, and less deliberative than longer messages on Facebook; however, in their experimental replication, they observed only a significant improvement in deliberation in the longer messages. ...
Many hoped that social networking sites would allow for the open exchange of information and a revival of the public sphere. Unfortunately, conversations on social media are often toxic and not conducive to healthy political discussions. Twitter, the most widely used social network for political discussions, doubled the limit of characters in a tweet in November 2017, which provided an opportunity to study the effect of technological affordances on political discussions using a discontinuous time series design. Using supervised and unsupervised natural language processing methods, we analyzed 358,242 tweet replies to U.S. politicians from January 2017 to March 2018. We show that doubling the permissible length of a tweet led to less uncivil, more polite, and more constructive discussions online. However, the declining trend in the empathy and respectfulness of these tweets raises concerns about the implications of the changing norms for the quality of political deliberation.
... Although these informal initiatives were developed to expose students to AM processes, they do not successfully inform students about the opportunities provided by AM, which could be important in encouraging innovation [44]. Given the constructive nature of learning [45], students' ...
The use of additive manufacturing (AM) has increased in many industries, resulting in a commensurate need for a workforce skilled in AM. To meet this need, educational institutions are integrating design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) into the engineering curriculum. However, limited research has explored the impact of these educational interventions in bringing about changes in the technical goodness of students' design outcomes. This study explores this gap through experimentation with 193 participants recruited from a junior-level, mechanical engineering design course. Participants were split into three educational intervention groups: (1) no DfAM, (2) restrictive DfAM, and (3) restrictive and opportunistic (dual) DfAM. The effects of the educational intervention on the participants' use of DfAM were measured through changes in (1) participants' DfAM self-efficacy, (2) technical goodness of their AM design outcomes, and (3) participants' use of DfAM-related concepts when describing and evaluating their AM designs. The results showed that while all three educational interventions result in similar changes in the participants' opportunistic DfAM self-efficacy, participants who receive only restrictive DfAM inputs show the greatest increase in their restrictive DfAM self-efficacy. Further, we see that despite these differences, all three groups show a similar decrease in the technical goodness of their AM designs, after attending the lectures. These results emphasize the need for DfAM education to encourage the use of both opportunistic and restrictive DfAM during student design challenges. Results also highlight the possible influence of the problem statement on the use of DfAM in solving it.
... While some amount of choice is necessary, having too much can be counterproductive. A narrowed focus in a creative space can push people to explore the problem in original ways [7]. Thus, the introduction of a prop can force the performer to think of new and creative ways to incorporate the object in a scene. ...
While improvised theatre (improv) is often performed on a bare stage, improvisers sometimes incorporate physical props to inspire new directions for a scene and to enrich their performance. A tech booth can improvise light and sound technical elements, but coordinating with improvisers' actions on-stage is challenging. Our goal is to inform the design of an augmented prop that lets improvisers tangibly control light and sound technical elements while performing. We interviewed five professional improvisers about their use of physical props in improv, and their expectations of a possible augmented prop that controls technical theatre elements. We propose a set of guidelines for the design of an augmented prop that fits with the existing world of unpredictable improvised performance.
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Research on the creative process has focused on how an idea develops within a single focal creative project. But creators often work to develop creative portfolios featuring multiple projects that overlap and intertwine over time. Through an inductive qualitative study of creative workers in independent theater and in architecture, we explore how creators manage ideas across multiple projects when developing creative portfolios. Our emergent model shows how creators shift ideas across projects by stockpiling ideas from one creative project, transforming them into resources, and mobilizing them in their portfolios. Our analysis reveals that these practices unfold in distinct ways across two different processes for managing ideas: managing ideas strategically to build portfolios by realizing stockpiled ideas in new creative products across different opportunities, and managing ideas symbolically to balance creative outputs with new meanings constructed from unrealized ideas that represent the creator’s identity and journey. Our findings reveal the critical role of stockpiling in creative work, showing how different ways of stockpiling transform ideas into resources for developing a portfolio. Our portfolio perspective on the creative process informs our understanding of creative portfolios as they develop and evolve as well as the dynamics of creative processes as they unfold across different projects.
This chapter provides an overview of how ELT materials can be improved through creative mindsets and innovative efforts, as well as through materials personalisation and localisation. It is not, however, a review of current approaches to the ELT curriculum but mainly offers innovative insights to enrich current ways of developing course materials. It addresses the three main areas covered by this book, namely creativity, innovations and teacher-learner involvement in coursebook design. One important obligation in the quest for successful English language education is to create and apply new experience in course materials. As the theme of this book indicates, materials writers are constantly challenged by the need to produce novel ideas (creativity) and implement them via coursebook design (innovation).
Connecting the affordance framework in computer-mediated communication to public relations theories, this essay proposes an affordance perspective on dialogic communication and digital public relations in general. We argue that 1) the enactment of organization-public dialogue on digital platforms requires certain combinations of media affordances; 2) the lens of affordances facilitates a non-dichotomous examination of the “dialogic communication vs. digital media” debate; 3) the fifth dialogic principle “ease of interface” should be conceptually expanded to “favorable affordances,” which asserts that public relations practice should evaluate digital media platforms’ various action possibilities and consider their inherent potentials for organization-public relationship building; and 4) research on digital public relations should incorporate affordance theory to achieve cross-platform theorization.
Task complexity has long been posited as an influential task feature inspiring much research. However, task complexity frameworks might be in need of adjustment, as they tend to emphasize the role of cognitive factors and neglect affective ones despite the fact that learner agency and potential for creativity have been linked to certain aspects of task performance, possibly exerting their influence through learners’ affects. Thus, to investigate the role of agency and creativity in task-based L2 writing, this study aimed to explore the relationship between task conditions conceptualized as the levels of learner agency and the potential for creativity in Chinese students’ English written performances on the one hand, and the possible role that the study contexts might play in the written performances in each task condition on the other. Participants of the study were two groups of Chinese intermediate learners of English studying in Hungary and China (n = 40), producing 120 narratives altogether. In our study, different aspects of task performance, i.e., syntactic and lexical complexity and accuracy, were associated with learner agency and potential for creativity. Moreover, differences were found in fluency between Chinese students studying in the different contexts, indicating the possible role of study contexts in this regard.
Das Kapitel beleuchtet, wie Innovationsräume als „Enabling Spaces“ in Unternehmen gewohnte Muster aufbrechen und Innovationsprozesse fördern können. Anhand eines Umsetzungsbeispiels des Unternehmens Bühler AG (Schweiz) wird aufgezeigt, dass v. a. teilintegrierte Innovationsräumlichkeiten die Begegnungen zwischen Menschen und die Konfrontation mit unbekanntem Denken und Handeln zulassen oder sogar unterstützen und damit geeignete Rahmenbedingungen für radikale Innovationen schaffen. Darüber hinaus bergen solche Innovationsbauten eine hohe Sichtbarkeit gegen außen wie auch gegen innen. Es wird aber deutlich, dass architektonische Veränderungen allein nicht zur gewünschten Innovationsförderung führen. „Enabling Spaces“ zu etablieren, bedeutet auch, eine Haltung des Ermöglichens einzunehmen, die das Prozesshafte, den sozialen Kontext sowie die Nutzung des Zufalls bei radikalen Innovationsvorhaben unterstützt. Die erste Betriebsphase zeigt, dass sich die Aussenwirkung einfacher einstellt als die Innenwirkung. Dies, weil eine möglichst breite Integration von Mitarbeitenden in Aktivitäten im Innovationsraum einen Kulturwandel bedingt, der nur langsam vonstattengeht.
Jane Darke’s 1979 article “The Primary Generator and the Design Process” appeared in the very first issue of Design Studies. In the four decades of design research that followed, the article became a classic. In the article’s revaluation of the role subjectivity plays in design, Darke posits a construct called the “the primary generator”—a limited set of (typically subjective) constraints—as a way for architects to engage with design tasks characterized by complexity. The primary generator acts as a random starting point, located within a subset of constraints, which is iteratively adjusted as the design process takes place. It may be construed as a subjectively valued organizing principle driving the design process. It may also be read as either a liberating force of subjective creative freedom, or as a subjective source of bias and fixation that the architect may be unwilling or unable to later escape. Darke herself held both these positions over time. Her ideas on the malleability of the design space and the very initiation of the creative design process by imposition of constraints have been critical in the evolution of constraint research, which represents a rich strand of interdisciplinary design research.
Things have meaning. Your job, your smartphone, even your insurance has another layer of meaning than its intended reason for existence. Products have become complex combinations of applications and features so small, that their shape no longer characterizes them. As people we have evolved into empowered consumers looking for purpose in our lives and in the things we buy. Advertising discovered the power of meaning more than a century ago. Since then, what has proven difficult is to quantify meaning. The skills we are taught in our educational system and the processes we apply in business fall short of identifying the bigger picture – the patterns that point to what something means. Conceptual Thinking uses a step-by-step process to uncover meaning and create Concepts that can in turn be developed into meaning-based solutions. Conceptual Thinking is not a model, but an individual skill that is trained through exercises and theory; over time it becomes an intuitive skill. This study describes the development of the process by the author as well as three case studies pointing to the potential to be mined from an evolving, structured, non-linear form of creative thinking.
Adviser: Betsy Gabb
What lies at the centre of the evolution of human language, according to complex/dynamic theory, is the need for humans to
innovate and use language to construct new meaning. Language evolution studies propose that language grows in complexity over
time to deal with complex tasks. Language goes through a trajectory of change in accordance with the needs of language users
as they innovate complex language to handle complex tasks and communicate new meanings. However, in many language learning
tasks used in research and language teaching, language is employed primarily to express ‘known meaning’ rather than to construct
‘unknown meaning’. In order to increase the learner’s desire to explore and retrieve less accessible language within and beyond
their Zone of Proximal Development, this paper discusses how language learning tasks can be transformed into creative tasks.
It proposes two conditions that facilitate creativity: the use of multicultural experiences and constraints.
Interpretation of sparse or incomplete datasets is a fundamental part of geology, par- ticularly when building models of the subsurface. Available geological data are often remotely sensed (seismic data) or very limited in spatial extent (borehole data). Understanding how different datasets are interpreted and what makes an interpreter effective is critical if accurate geological models are to be created. A comparison of the interpretation outcome and techniques used by two cohorts interpreting different geological datasets of the same model, an inversion struc- ture, was made. The first cohort consists of interpreters of the synthetic seismic image data in Bond et al. (‘What do you think this is?: “Conceptual uncertainty” in geoscience interpretation’, GSA Today, 2007, 17, 4–10, http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/GSAT01711A.1); the second cohort is new and interpreted borehole data. The outcomes of the borehole interpretation dataset support earlier findings that technique use, specifically evidence of geological evolution thought processes, results in more effective interpretation. The results also show that the borehole interpreters were more effective at arriving at the correct interpretation. Analysis of their final interpretations in the context of psychological and medical image analysis research suggests that the clarity of the original dataset, the amount of noise and white space may play a role in interpretation outcome, through enforced geological reasoning during data interpretation.
Download free: http://sp.lyellcollection.org/content/early/2015/02/09/SP421.4.full.pdf+html
Stanford University's design methodology program—a master's-level course in mechanical engineering—involves a prototype deliverable that explicitly prompts student design teams to investigate previously unexplored and potentially risky or intimidating corners of their design space. Each team carries out this exploration during a design mission known as the "Dark Horse Prototype." The prototype introduces a means of preventing premature convergence on an idea and forces teams to take a fresh look at their problem space. By reviewing case studies of projects in this course it can be seen that the Dark Horse prototype leads to most teams (1) replacing their vision with the Dark Horse vision or an element of it (2) adopting Dark Horse insights into their overall vision, or (3) using insights from the prototype to align as a team. We propose that the Dark Horse prototype is a powerful driver of innovation in any product development cycle, a useful tool for design space exploration, and a key asset in managing risk throughout the engineering design process.
The use of interrater reliability (IRR) and interrater agreement (IRA) indices has increased dramatically during the past 20 years. This popularity is, at least in part, because of the increased role of multilevel modeling techniques (e.g., hierarchical linear modeling and multilevel structural equation modeling) in organizational research. IRR and IRA indices are often used to justify aggregating lower-level data used in composition models. The purpose of the current article is to expose researchers to the various issues surrounding the use of IRR and IRA indices often used in conjunction with multilevel models. To achieve this goal, the authors adopt a question-and-answer format and provide a tutorial in the appendices illustrating how these indices may be computed using the SPSS software.
This paper is based on the premises that the purpose of
engineering education is to graduate engineers who can design,
and that design thinking is complex. The paper begins by briefly
reviewing the history and role of design in the engineering
curriculum. Several dimensions of design thinking are then
detailed, explaining why design is hard to learn and harder still to
teach, and outlining the research available on how well design
thinking skills are learned. The currently most-favored
pedagogical model for teaching design, project-based learning
(PBL), is explored next, along with available assessment data on
its success. Two contexts for PBL are emphasized: first-year
cornerstone courses and globally dispersed PBL courses. Finally,
the paper lists some of the open research questions that must be
answered to identify the best pedagogical practices of improving
design learning, after which it closes by making recommendations
for research aimed at enhancing design learning.
A recent article by Lindell and Brandt raised two concerns regarding the use of James, Demaree, and Wolf’s interrater agreement indices rWG and rWG(J). First, they noted that the multi-item rWG(J) equation is mathematically equivalent to inserting rWG into the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula and questioned whether applying a formula developed for a reliability index was also appropriate for an agreement index. Second, they questioned the appropriateness of James et al.’s suggestion of replacing obtained negative values of rWG with zeros. This article addresses these concerns by demonstrating that rWG(J) can be derived independently from the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula and that negative values of rWG can be avoided by reparameterizing the structural equation underlying the data when there is systematic disagreement between subgroups of raters.
The concept and measurement of commitment to goals, a key aspect of goal-setting theory, are discussed. The strength of the relationship between commitment and performance is asserted to depend on the amount of variance in commitment. Three major categories of determinants of commitment are discussed: external factors (authority, peer influence, external rewards), interactive factors (participation and competition), and internal factors (expectancy, internal rewards). Applications of these ideas are made and new research directions are suggested.
Free production of variability through unfettered divergent thinking holds out the seductive promise of effortless creativity, but runs the risk of generating only quasi-creativity or pseudo-creativity if it is not adapted to reality. Thus, creative thinking seems to involve two components: generation of novelty (via divergent thinking) and evaluation of the novelty (via convergent thinking). In the area of convergent thinking, knowledge is of particular importance: It is a source of ideas, suggests pathways to solutions, and provides criteria of effectiveness and novelty. The way in which the two kinds of thinking work together can be understood in terms of thinking styles or of phases in the generation of creative products. In practical situations, divergent thinking without convergent thinking can cause a variety of problems including reckless change. None the less, care must be exercised by those who sing the praises of convergent thinking: Both too little and too much is bad for creativity.
Problem construction has been suggested as the first step in creative problem solving, but our understanding of the underlying process is limited. According to a model of problem construction (Mumford, Reiter-Palmon, & Redmond 1994), problem construction ability, active engagement in problem construction, and the presence of diverse and inconsistent cues influence creative problem solving. To test these hypotheses, 195 undergraduates were asked to solve 6 real-life problems and complete a measure of problem construction ability. Active engagement in problem construction was manipulated by instructions to the participants. Cue consistency was manipulated by the information presented in the problem situation. The quality, originality, and creativity of the solutions were evaluated. Results indicated that problem construction ability was related to higher qualify solutions as well as solutions rated as more original. Problem construction ability also interacted with cue consistency such that individuals with high problem construction ability produced solutions of higher quality and originality when faced with inconsistent cues. The implication of these findings to our understanding of creative problem solving and the problem construction process are discussed.
Little dispute exists with regard to the conceptual and practical contributions of team mental models (TMMs) to team-related research and applications, yet the measurement of TMMs poses great challenges for researchers and practitioners. Borrowing from performance appraisal practices, this article presents a new method for assessing TMMs that is user-friendly and allows for the measurement of both TMM accuracy and similarity. The extent to which TMM similarity and accuracy indices predict team performance in a field setting is examined. Contributions to team research and practice are discussed.
Previous research has shown that individuals are most likely to escalate the amount of resources committed to a course of action when they have been personally responsible for negative consequences. The present study examined the process of escalation over three points in time and under four experimental conditions. A 2 X 2 X 3 factorial experiment was conducted in which personal responsibility, efficacy of resources, and time were the independent variables, and commitment of resources to a course of action was the dependent variable. The results replicated the escalation effect over an immediate time period, but showed that investment of resources in a course of action was not stable over time. Although there were immediate effects of personal responsibility and efficacy of resources upon escalation behavior, these two variables interacted with the time factor.
Engineering design concerns us all. In new products we expect higher quality, better reliability, lower cost, improved safety and more respect for the environment. The Design Manager is responsible for fulfilling these disparate and often mutually contradictory expectations, guiding the design team while liaising with and drawing support from project managers, manufacturers, marketing staff, customers and users. Design Managers and their teams will find the revised and expanded second edition of Managing Engineering Design to be a practical book providing a framework of precepts for the management of engineering design projects. Features include: jargon-free language with well-tried, real-world examples; useful tips for managers at the end of each chapter; a comprehensive bibliography at the end of the book. Managing Engineering Design is for design managers in industry, general managers with responsibility for design projects, and those training to become technical or design managers. It is also highly informative for graduate and undergraduate engineering students and ideally suited for establishing a web-based design management system for geographically dispersed teams.
"This remarkable book, based on sound empirical research and design project experience, will be an enormous help to design managers and design engineers…" Professor Ken Wallace, University of Cambridge
"The practical approach of Hales and Gooch particularly appealed to me… [they] manage to pull together a concise package of best practice in engineering management and successfully tie together the different activities that are often presented as unconnected. This is no minor feat and I lift my hat to them."
Doctor Roope Takala, Program Manager, Nokia Group
I: Background.- 1. An Introduction.- 2. Conceptualizations of Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination.- II: Self-Determination Theory.- 3. Cognitive Evaluation Theory: Perceived Causality and Perceived Competence.- 4. Cognitive Evaluation Theory: Interpersonal Communication and Intrapersonal Regulation.- 5. Toward an Organismic Integration Theory: Motivation and Development.- 6. Causality Orientations Theory: Personality Influences on Motivation.- III: Alternative Approaches.- 7. Operant and Attributional Theories.- 8. Information-Processing Theories.- IV: Applications and Implications.- 9. Education.- 10. Psychotherapy.- 11. Work.- 12. Sports.- References.- Author Index.
- This paper describes the process of inducting theory using case studies from specifying the research questions to reaching closure. Some features of the process, such as problem definition and construct validation, are similar to hypothesis-testing research. Others, such as within-case analysis and replication logic, are unique to the inductive, case-oriented process. Overall, the process described here is highly iterative and tightly linked to data. This research approach is especially appropriate in new topic areas. The resultant theory is often novel, testable, and empirically valid. Finally, framebreaking insights, the tests of good theory (e.g., parsimony, logical coherence), and convincing grounding in the evidence are the key criteria for evaluating this type of research.
Intrinsic motivation is based in the human need to be competent and self-determining in relation to the environment. We now look at how this develops and evolves. In so doing we will consider both how intrinsic motivation affects development and how intrinsic motivation develops.
Recent experimental research suggests 2 things. The first is that along with learning how to do something, people also learn how variably or differently to continue doing it. The second is that high variability is maintained by constraining, precluding a currently successful, often repetitive solution to a problem. In this view, Claude Monet's habitually high level of variability in painting was acquired during his childhood and early apprenticeship and was maintained throughout his adult career by a continuous series of task constraints imposed by the artist on his own work. For Monet, variability was rewarded and rewarding.
The creative process, one of the key topics discussed in Guilford's (1950) address to the American Psychological Association and his subsequent work, refers to the sequence of thoughts and actions that leads to novel, adaptive productions. This article examines conceptions of the creative process that have been advocated during the past century. In particular, stage-based models of the creative process are discussed and the evolution of these models is traced. Empirical research suggests that the basic 4-stage model of the creative process may need to be revised or replaced. Several key questions about the creative process are raised, such as how the creative process differs from the noncreative process and how process-related differences may lead to different levels of creative performance. New directions for future research are identified.
The theme permeating this book on assessment centers is "continuity and change", describing what has remained the same and what has changed in the 50-year history of the assessment center method. One of the important changes explored is the evolution of the goals of assessment center programs and the ways in which assessment centers and their component parts have been used. Assessment Centers in Human Resource Management clearly differentiates between assessment centers used for prediction, diagnoses, and development. In addition, this book explores: Assessment centers and human resource management; Court cases involving assessment centers; Innovations in assessment center operations; Cross-cultural considerations including diversity of the workforce; and assessor training. The target audience for the text includes students who are learning about assessment centers, practitioners including human resource managers and consultants who may be considering the implementation of assessment centers, and academicians who are researching the method and wish to understand current issues. © 2006 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.
This article addresses the question how generating creative ideas (as done in brainstorming sessions) contributes to effective innovation. Several experiments are discussed, which show that creative idea generation in itself is not sufficient to come to the selection of good ideas; instead, using the right selection criteria is essential. Implications for management practice are discussed.
Robert McKee's screenwriting workshops have earned him an international reputation for inspiring novices, refining works in progress and putting major screenwriting careers back on track. Quincy Jones, Diane Keaton, Gloria Steinem, Julia Roberts, John Cleese and David Bowie are just a few of his celebrity alumni. Writers, producers, development executives and agents all flock to his lecture series, praising it as a mesmerizing and intense learning experience.
In Story, McKee expands on the concepts he teaches in his $450 seminars (considered a must by industry insiders), providing readers with the most comprehensive, integrated explanation of the craft of writing for the screen. No one better understands how all the elements of a screenplay fit together, and no one is better qualified to explain the "magic" of story construction and the relationship between structure and character than Robert McKee.
The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity is a comprehensive scholarly handbook on creativity from the most respected psychologists, researchers and educators. This handbook serves both as a thorough introduction to the field of creativity and as an invaluable reference and current source of important information. It covers such diverse topics as the brain, education, business, and world cultures. The first section, 'Basic Concepts', is designed to introduce readers to both the history of and key concepts in the field of creativity. The next section, 'Diverse Perspectives of Creativity', contains chapters on the many ways of approaching creativity. Several of these approaches, such as the functional, evolutionary, and neuroscientific approaches, have been invented or greatly reconceptualized in the last decade. The third section, 'Contemporary Debates', highlights ongoing topics that still inspire discussion. Finally, the editors summarize and discuss important concepts from the book and look to what lies ahead.
This chapter discusses the contextualist epistemology as an appropriate metatheory for psychology. Contextualism's implications for reforming the process and product of psychology are also discussed in the chapter. The two phases of needed process reforms are described in the chapter for creatively generating hypotheses and developing them by the means of empirical confrontation. In the chapter, the psychological product is also discussed by reviewing the various theoretical depictions of the person that have guided and grown out of the research process. These implications are described for the process of developing psychological theory and then as relative to the product—the theories that emerge from the process. The various internal criteria for judging the relative adequacy of competing theories—that are sometimes even mutually contradictory—illustrates a basic descriptive tenet of contextualism. The four types of theories guiding and emerging from the research are (1) categorical theory, (2) process theories, (3) axiomatic theories, and (4) guiding-idea theories. The sixteen partial views of human nature that have served as guiding-idea theories for psychological research are tabulated in the chapter. The content aspect of social psychology or contextualism reveals the need for an ecumenical stance toward theory for recognizing the existence and utility of a wide variety of formulations to generate insights into the contents and determinants of experience and behavior.
Examined the conditions under which the imposition of an extrinsic constraint upon performance of an activity can lead to decrements in creativity. 95 female undergraduates worked on an art activity either with or without the expectation of external evaluation. In addition, Ss were asked to focus on either the creative or the technical aspects of the activity or they were given no specific focus. Finally, some Ss expecting evaluation were given explicit instructions on how to make their artworks. As predicted, Ss in the evaluation groups produced artworks significantly lower on judged creativity than did Ss in the nonevaluation control groups. The only evaluation group for which this pattern was reversed had received explicit instructions on how to make artworks that would be judged creative. A possible reconciliation of these 2 disparate results is proposed, and practical implications are discussed. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
Two experiments examined the effects of evaluation expectation and the presence of others on creativity. In both experiments, some subjects expected that their work would be evaluated by experts, and others expected no evaluation. Evaluation expectation was crossed, in each experiment, with the presence of others. In the first experiment, the presence of others was operationalized as coaction; half of the subjects worked individually in small groups, and the others worked alone. In the second experiment, the presence of others was operationalized as surveillance; half of the subjects believed they were being watched while working. In both studies, subsequent creativity ratings of subjects’ products were made by expert judges. Effects of evaluation expectation were consistently strong. On a verbal task in Study 1 and an artistic task in Study 2, creativity was lower in the groups expecting evaluation than those not expecting evaluation. Evidence for the social facilitation or social inhibition of creativity was less clear. Coaction had no effect, and surveillance had a weak negative effect. Moreover, there was some evidence that the effect of surveillance was due to experienced evaluation. The results are discussed in terms of motivational and cognitive influences on creativity.
Many scholars view integratively complex reasoning as either cognitively or morally superior to integratively simple reasoning. This value judgment is, however, too simple to capture the complex, subtle, and even paradoxical linkages between integrative complexity and "good judgment" in historical context. Our case studies add to the growing literature on this topic by assessing the integrative and cognitive complexity of policy statements that Winston Churchill and his political adversaries made during two key foreign policy debates of the 1930s-the appeasement of Nazi Germany (where contemporary opinion overwhelmingly favors Churchill) and the granting of self-government to India (where contemporary opinion overwhelmingly favors Churchill's opponents). In both private and public, Churchill expressed less integratively complex but more cognitively complex opinions than did his opponents on both Nazi Germany and self-government for India. The results illustrate (a) impressive consistency in Churchill's integrative but not cognitive complexity in both private and public communications over time and issue domains, and (b) the dependence of normative judgments of styles of thinking on speculative counterfactual reconstructions of history and on moral-political values. We close by arguing that, although integrative complexity can be maladaptive in specific decision-making settings, it can still be highly adaptive at the meta-decision-making level where leaders "decide how to decide." Good judgment requires the ability to shift from simple to complex modes of processing in timely and appropriate ways.
The process of theory construction in organizational studies is portrayed as imagination disciplined by evolutionary processes analogous to artificial selection. The quality of theory produced is predicted to vary as a function of the accuracy and detail present in the problem statement that triggers theory building, the number of and independence among the conjectures that attempt to solve the problem, and the number and diversity of selection criteria used to test the conjectures. It is argued that interest is a substitute for validation during theory construction, middle range theories are a necessity if the process is to be kept manageable, and representations such as metaphors are inevitable, given the complexity of the subject matter.
Most of America lives in cities, and it is one of the major tragedies of these times that our cities are in deep trouble. In small towns throughout the country, people still leave their houses unlocked and the keys in their cars when they park. No one living in a rural community would dream of stealing from someone else, because everyone knows everyone. Who wants to steal from people he knows? And if you stole a friends car, where could you drive it in a small community that it wouldn't instantly be recognized? When everyone knows everyone, complex social systems are not needed to help alleviate those disasters that strike-the fire and police departments are staffed chiefly by volunteers (who never go on strike), and the welfare department consists of charitable neighbors rather than squads o f social workers. Cities are supposed to be collections of small towns, but in at least one important sense, they are not: in a rural community, everyone sees the (often rather crude) machinery of government and feels that it is available to him. In large cities, this machinery is mostly invisible, hidden away in inaccessible Kafkaesque corners. Involvement in local affairs is almost forced on the small-town citizen; the apartment dweller in New York withdraws into his own little world not so much because he wants to as because he has no ready means o f participating actively in the life o f his city even if he wants to. And, as John M. Darley and Bibb Latane point out, withdrawal from and lack of concern about one's fellow citizens can become a terrible habit. Kitty Genovese is set upon by a maniac as she returns home from work at 3 A.m. Thirty-eight of her neighbors in Kew Gardens come to their windows when she cries out in terror; none comes to her assistance even though her stalker takes over half an hour to murder her. No one even so much as calls the police. She dies. Andrew Mormille is stabbed in the stomach as he rides the A train home to Manhattan. Eleven other riders watch the seventeen-year-old boy as he bleeds to death; none comes to his assistance even though his attackers have left the car. He dies.
Cet article présente une synthèse des recherches et théories qui éclairent notre compréhension de la créativité et de la mise en œuvre de l’innovation dans les groupes de travail. Il semble que la créativité apparaisse essentiellement au cours des premières étapes du processus, avant la mise en œuvre. On étudie l’influence des caractéristiques de la tâche, des capacités et de l’éventail des connaissances du groupe, des demandes externes, des mécanismes d’intégration et de cohérence de groupe. La perception d’une menace, l’incertitude ou de fortes exigences entravent la créativité, mais favorisent l’innovation. La diversité des connaissances et des capacités est un bon prédicteur de l’innovation, mais l’intégration du groupe et les compétences sont indispensables pour récolter les fruits de la diversité. On examine aussi les implications théoriques et pratiques de ces considérations.
In this article I synthesise research and theory that advance our understanding of creativity and innovation implementation in groups at work. It is suggested that creativity occurs primarily at the early stages of innovation processes with innovation implementation later. The influences of task characteristics, group knowledge diversity and skill, external demands, integrating group processes and intragroup safety are explored. Creativity, it is proposed, is hindered whereas perceived threat, uncertainty or other high levels of demands aid the implementation of innovation. Diversity of knowledge and skills is a powerful predictor of innovation, but integrating group processes and competencies are needed to enable the fruits of this diversity to be harvested. The implications for theory and practice are also explored.
This study investigates the effects of prior experience, task instruction, and choice on creative performance. Although extant research suggests that giving people choice in how they approach a task could enhance creative performance, we propose that this view needs to be circumscribed.
Specifically, we argue that when choice is administered during problem solving by varying the number of available resources, the high combinatorial flexibility conferred by a large choice set of resources can be overwhelming. Through two experiments, we found that only individuals with high prior experience in the task domain and given explicit instruction to be creative produced more creative outcomes when given more choice. When either of these two conditions is not met (i.e., low prior experience or given non-creativity instruction), more choice did not lead to more creative performance. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
How does combining activities and freely choosing between them increase or decrease subsequent interest in them? In an extenstion of activity engagement theory (Higgins & Trope, 1990), we propose that an identified activity is associated with an approach or avoidance orientation that serves as a reference point for making evaluative inferences about engagement choices. People make inferences that are informative, i.e., that provide information beyond what is already known. Because people expect to approach a liked activity, choosing not to approach is more informative than choosing to approach. When people forsake a liked activity for another activity, therefore, they infer that the forsaken activity is not so positive. Thus, switching back and forth between two liked activities candecreasesubsequent interest in them. Because people expect to avoid a disliked activity, choosing not to avoid is more informative than choosing to avoid. When people choose a disliked activity instead of another activity, therefore, they infer that the chosen activity is not so negative. Thus, switching back and forth between two disliked activities canincreasesubsequent interest in them. We describe previous research and present new research that supports each of these predictions. We then consider other ways in which combining activities can undermine or enhance interest depending on how engagement choices are represented.
Past work leaves open whether conflict helps or hinders team innovation. Reconciling this inconsistency, Study 1 showed that work teams were more innovative when the level of task conflict was moderate instead of low or high. Study 2 showed that this curvilinear effect exists for task conflict, but not for relationship conflict, and that the effects of task conflict are mediated by collaborative problem solving. Study 2 also showed that although moderate levels of task conflict may promote team innovation, it simultaneously reduces short-term goal attainment in teams. Implications for conflict (management) theory and work on innovation are discussed.
The provision of choice is one of the most common vehicles through which managers empower employees in organizations. Although past psychological and organizational research persuasively suggests that choice confers personal agency, and is thus intrinsically motivating, emerging research indicates that there could be potential pitfalls. In this chapter, we examine the various factors that could influence the effects of choice. Specifically, we examine individual-level factors such as the chooser's socioeconomic status and cultural background. We also examine situational factors such as the content of choice and the number of choices offered. We then expand our discussion on the effect of giving employees extensive choice by looking at its influence on creative performance. In the second half of this chapter, we discuss implications for future organizational behavior research and examine how emerging research on choice making can inform specific managerial practices.
Many programs for gifted and talented students try to provide a foundation for later creative achievement. Creative achievement, however, depends on the individual's ability to solve novel, ill‐defined problems. In this article, we examine cognitive capacities that contribute to creative problem solving. It is argued that problem solving requires expertise and information processing skills. We also note that other characteristics may be needed to maintain creative problem‐ solving efforts, such as adaptability and wisdom. The implications of these observations for the development of creative talent also are considered.
This paper examines British Columbia's decision to host a world's fair (Expo 86) in Vancouver. Despite rapidly increasing deficit projections (from a 6-million projected loss in 1978 to over a 300-million projected loss in 1985), the provincial government remained steadfast in its plans to hold Expo. Expo is therefore a visible and prototypical example of the escalation of commitment, a phenomenon subject to extensive laboratory research in recent years. By examining the Expo case in some detail, this study provides field grounding for previous investigations of escalation. The case not only illustrates the frequently studied processes of self-justification and biased information processing but also highlights the potential importance of institutional explanations of escalation. New theory is proposed that integrates determinants of escalation from several levels of analysis over time. It is proposed that escalation starts with project and psychological forces but can evolve over time into a more structurally determined phenomenon.