What If Creativity Were 60 Things Not One, Towards a Grammar of Design

Abstract

This paper reports pilot study results on 3 things: a) Creativity Models as a Possible Language of Design -- designers and others segment detailed protocols of actual design processes at points where creativity models change or conflict in the designer/process b) Meta-Creation Improves Creativity the same way Meta-Cognition Improves Cognition -- designers exposed to more creativity models and more diverse models briefly afterwards show slight increases in creativity of design outcomes c) Design and Creativity are at least 60 Diverse Things not One Thing -- there are at least 60 different models of creativity, each of which purports to explain all of creativity, (gotten from 8000 subjects in 41 nations and 63 professions via questionnaires and interviews) several of which combine in any design process. So systems or technologies that purport to “support” design, or creativity, as if they were each one basic process, are actually supports for 1/60th or less of the design approaches there and they may harm more creativity models than they help -- we do not know because they pretend that creating is one thing, neither noticing nor measuring their effects on the other 59 creativity models out there to be “supported” someday.

Keywords: design syntax, design language, creativity models, design grammars, design singularities