1. The Psychology of Design Colleen Seifert Department of Psychology Seifert@umich.edu

2. Challenges for Psychology: What are the cognitive processes in design? What strategies lead to creative design? What do we wish we could know, and how can we find answers?

3. Common Ground?  Psychologist: Why don’t you employ psychologists?  Nuclear Power Plant Manager: What do you mean? Should we set up couches for psychotherapeutic sessions?  Who designs, constructs, and maintains your installation?  Engineers.  Who runs your installation?  Engineers.  Are these engineers human people?  Of course, what else?  Do you think that humans can make mistakes?  Of course every person makes mistakes.  Is it possible that engineers make mistakes, too?  … extended silence….

4. Psychological Science  1920-1950,.002% of publications were devoted to creativity  1980s:.01% of Psychological Abstracts involved creativity  1960-1991: 9000 total works included creativity  2005: First article with “Psychology and design“

5.  “Experience shows that, in its beginnings, design is very often exclusively technology driven. Human-centered perspectives are usually called upon only at later design stages where many constraints are already set.” (Wilpert, 2005) “Error” Approach

6. The Psychology of Everyday Things  Mismatch of designer and user conceptual models  “affordances” (Gibson, 1977)  Working backwards from error (Norman, 1988)

7. General Approach (Amabile, 1983)  Three components to creativity:  Domain relevant skills  Creativity relevant skills (heuristics)  Motivation

8.  Freedom  Autonomy  Good role models  Resources (Time)  Encouragement of originality  Freedom from criticism  Innovation norms and no fatal failures (Witt & Beorkrem, 1989, pp. 31-32). “Situated” Approach

9. (Sternberg & Lubart, 1995).   need a confluence of six resources: intelligence, knowledge, thinking styles, personality, motivation, and environment.   all six resources are related to judged creativity of products (e.g., very short stories, art works, advertisements, novel scientific solutions) Correlational Approach

10. Perspectives on Design Systems

11. Cognitive Approach  “The most fundamental issue for any design is to pursue a strategy that guarantees that the final design product matches user expectations in terms of the product’s usability, functionality, safety, and requisite user competencies.” (Wilpert, 2005).

12. Design Tasks  Planning a vacation  Infrastructure and city planning  Architectural design  Design of everyday products  Interior design  ???

13. Creative Design What is creativity?  overt behavior  both “original” and “appropriate”  based on values (originality, independence, parsimony, consistency, generality)  "something that breaks existing patterns” (Runco, 2004)

14. Measuring “Creative”  Creativity as judged by independent, competent evaluators (domain experts) Amabile, 1983)  Cross-cultural similarities (Chen et al., 2002).  Consensual judgments

15. Cognitive Processes in Design  Problem solving approach (Wertheimer, 1945)  problem space: rules, constraints  “affordances” (Gibson, 1977)  restructuring and insight

16. Using only three straight cuts with a knife, divide a round cake into eight equal pieces.

17. Cognitive Processes in Design Original ideas are remote, well- removed from the problem or idea Creativity involves tendency to “overinclusive thinking” (Eysenck, 1999)

18. Remote Associates Test (Mednick, 1962)   Find a fourth word which is related to all three CookiesSixteenHeart SurpriseLineBirthday BaseSnowDance BlueSharpMouse Flat associative hierarchy is more flexible, makes options accessible that are otherwise not

19.  Divergent thinking tests (Guilford, 1968)  Fluency  Originality  Flexibility  Open-ended How might the problems of migrant foreign workers be solved? Unusual Uses Test: Think of as many different ways as possible to use a brick. Cognitive Processes in Design

20.  Perkins et al., 1991; Pyszczynski and Greenberg, 1991)  “Under searching” is related to poor problem solving (Perkins et al., 1991; Pyszczynski and Greenberg, 1991)  Brainstorming (Osborn, 1957)  Postpone judgment:  Postpone judgment: ban criticism, defer closure  Focus on quantity, not quality:  Focus on quantity, not quality: stress fluent production  Hitchhike or piggyback:  Hitchhike or piggyback: encourage add ons

21. Cognitive Processes in Design Productivity Loss (Diehl & Stroebe, 1987) 4 people working alone always beat 4 working together!  Free riding Is individual’s work identifiable?  Evaluation apprehension Is evaluation likely?  Production blocking Is turn-taking interfering?

22. Cognitive Processes in Design Problem Finding (Csikszentmihalyi & Getzels, 1971) "discovery-oriented" behavior   spend more time exploring approaches before settling on one   ready to change if new approach suggested   not viewing a work as fixed   strong correlation between p.f. and professional success

23. Cognitive Processes in Design Problem solving orientation Over-inclusive thinking Divergent thinking Extensive search Problem finding

24. Problem orientation: Problem orientation: Adopt set-breaking Over-inclusive thinking: Use analogies Divergent thinking: Divergent thinking: Downrate precedents Extensive search: Brainstorm Problem finding: Fend off closure Cognitive Strategies in Design

25. Questions  Are these theories of cognitive processes viable in real design tasks?  Can the use of “creative design strategies” result in better designs?  What do designers and engineers think about cognitive processes?  ???

26. Design is a human activity “where the physical artifact or a part of it, which is under design, is not currently existent, but is believed to be so in the future.” (Pohjola, 2003, p. 181) Definition