Emperical Results from Measuring Design Creativity: Use of an Augmented Coding Scheme in Protocol Analysis
Year: 2016
Editor: Julie Linsey, Maria Yang, and Yukari Nagai
Author: John, Gero; Jeff, Kan
Series: ICDC
ISBN: 978-1-904670-82-7
Abstract
This paper presents preliminary results from using an augmented ontological coding scheme to generate quantitative descriptions of the cognitive behaviour of design creativity. The Function-Behaviour-Structure coding scheme is augmented with two new meta-issues coded as “new” and “surprising”. This augmented coding scheme is applied to an existing protocol of an in-situ team of professional designers to produce empirical data to test two hypotheses about designer behaviour in terms of novelty and surprise in creative designing. It is hypothesized that the cumulation of new issues will occur in a logarithmic pattern whilst the cumulation of surprising issues will occur in a power curve or S-shaped pattern. The results from this case study indicate some support for the hypothesis about novelty and do not support the hypothesis about surprise.
Keywords: protocol analysis, new and surprising, ontological model