Concept Generation for Design Creativity

Coming up with a concept is something nearly everyone can do, yet the process resists being pinned down as a set of steps. It works by synthesis rather than analysis, and its workings remain poorly understood. Studying it is hard, because the process is shaped by private feelings that are buried deep in the mind, and any theory of it must account for those feelings.

This book approaches concept generation from both the theoretical and the practical side. On the theory side, it weighs metaphor, abduction, and General Design Theory against one another by looking at where they overlap and where they diverge. On the method side, it covers analogy, blending, and integration through thematic relations. Earlier work treated these ideas separately, and their connections were never clearly drawn. The book also introduces two research methods created for this purpose: explanation-based protocol analysis and constructive simulation.

The intended readers are students, researchers, and lecturers in design fields such as engineering design, industrial design, software design, human-computer interaction, design education, and cognitive science. After reading, they should have a clear view of the latest research findings and an outline of the theories and methods behind concept generation, along with the ability to produce new concepts themselves.