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Does Design Rationale Enhance Creativity?

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Creativity and Rationale

Part of the book series: Human–Computer Interaction Series ((HCIS,volume 20))

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Abstract

Creativity and rationale are often viewed as two contrasting facets in software design. A lack in recognizing the facilitative relationship between creativity and rationale not only underestimates the benefits designers can obtain from rationale practices, but also confines the approaches that support creativity in software design. Our exploratory study provides empirical evidence of the positive correlation between rationale and creativity. Furthermore, we found that the feasibility of design alternatives and the comprehensiveness of tradeoff evaluation are critical to enhancing novelty, persuasiveness, and insightfulness. We also discuss future directions to further understand how these properties, or rationale quality in general, affects design creativity.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This was a workshop on creativity and rationale in software design sponsored by NSF CreativeIT program. It was held at University Park, PA in June, 2008. John M. Carroll wrote a manifesto, “The Essential Tension of Creativity and Rationale in Software Design,” for this workshop.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by John M. Carroll and Umer Farooq’s grants NSF SGER IIS-0749172 and NSF CreativeIT Workshop IIS-0742392. We thank instructors of the course in which we implemented our study, Craig Ganoe and John Daughtry, for their assistance in the study design and coordination with participants. We also thank the teaching assistants of the course Ishita Ghosh and Haibin Liu for assessing design rationale documents.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Human-Computer Interaction, College of Information Sciences and Technology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Jing Wang & John M. Carroll

  2. Microsoft Corporation, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA, 98052, USA

    Umer Farooq

Authors
  1. Jing Wang
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  2. Umer Farooq
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  3. John M. Carroll
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jing Wang .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. College of Information Sciences and Tech, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park 332, Pennsylvania, 16802, Pennsylvania, USA

    John M. Carroll

Appendix

Appendix

10.1.1 Evaluation Criteria

  • Quality of Design Rationale (1  =  very poor, 5  =  very good)

    • Toughest Design Problem Identification: Does the statement of toughest design problem capture a critical issue of this lab?

    • Relevance of alternatives: Can the design alternatives solve the problem stated?

    • Feasibility of alternatives: Can the design alternatives be implemented by using the technique taught in class?

    • Comprehensiveness of tradeoffs (pros and cons): Do the tradeoffs reveal main concerns about each design alternative?

    • Decision: Is the design alternative selected the optimal solution?

    • Clarity of articulation: Can the report be well understood?

  • Creativity of Design

    • Novelty of design alternatives: Are the design alternatives novel?

    • Persuasiveness of tradeoffs: Are the tradeoffs persuasive?

    • Insightfulness of tradeoffs: Do the tradeoffs provide insightful justification of design alternatives?

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Wang, J., Farooq, U., Carroll, J.M. (2013). Does Design Rationale Enhance Creativity?. In: Carroll, J. (eds) Creativity and Rationale. Human–Computer Interaction Series, vol 20. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-4111-2_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-4111-2_10

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