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Modelling the Creative Process in Design: A Socio-cognitive Approach

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The Creative Process

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture ((PASCC))

Abstract

Although design has long resisted attempts for a rigorous definition, it is often considered to be an archetypically creative activity. Design, today more than ever, is said to be at the forefront of the innovation economy (Le Masson, Weil, & Hatchuel in Strategic Management of Innovation and Design, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2010). In this paper, we focus more specifically on the creative process of designers, i.e. the sequence of thoughts and actions that leads designers to come up with a novel, adaptive production in response to a design brief (Lubart in Creativity Research Journal, 2001). Starting with Herbert Simon’s call in the 1960s to inaugurate “a science of design” (Simon in The Sciences of the Artificial, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1969), we show that investigations of this creative process have considered creativity in design primarily as a psychological and social activity. We describe the main findings and limitations of each approach, and discuss future prospects for research.

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  1. Paris Descartes University, Paris, France

    Julien Nelson

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  1. Julien Nelson
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  1. Paris Descartes University, Paris, France

    Todd Lubart

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Nelson, J. (2018). Modelling the Creative Process in Design: A Socio-cognitive Approach. In: Lubart, T. (eds) The Creative Process. Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50563-7_8

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