Can research inform creativity? On Thursday I went to a talk by Brenda Laurel on Design Research. Some of what she says about design research is covered in the online paper, New Players, New Games. What I liked is the humanism and idealism of her approach, both for teaching and research/creation. “Market research tells you how to sell something. Design research shows you what to make” in the first place.
Laurel is currently consulting at Sun and leading the graduate program in Media Design at the Art Center College of Design which she describes in Tools for Knowing, Judging, and Taking Action in the 21st Century.
In the talk Laurel walked us through the design reseach process she teaches. The process starts with a focus and a literature review to see what we know about the phenomena. From there she and her students design various probes and tools with which to do qualitative research. The research informs the design process. (I’ve simplified, obviously … read the book.)
What impressed me was how the research was itself “designed” in that the probes were games and the representations of the results were presented back in innovative designs. Thus there was creative design at every stage.