Divergent thinking and the design process

The paper explores a view of research on creativity in design not based on traditional cognitive science models. Research from the creative cognition standpoint is reviewed with an example and the problem of applying it to the design case is explained. Creative techniques used in design lack a scientific base and lack an evaluation of their effectiveness. They emphasise the generation of ideas and not the generation of tangible solutions. The argument states that design research should be looking neither to the act of idea generation nor to the act of form generation and reinterpretation but to the enacted use environment in which designers operate and from which functions emerge. Departing from new models in cognitive science two hypotheses are formed. The first claims that the creative outcome in design may be based on an enacted experience of use and not on a rationalisation of imagery or represented forms. The second claims that diagrams created during the design process, mainly in its first stages, may serve the purpose of problem finding and not of problem solving.