Idea? Idea... IDEA!

My responses to the various readings on measuring creativity and idea generation.

Readings assigned for this week:
Desiginign Sustainability, Agogino
Creativity as a Design Criterion, H. Christianns
Metrics for measuring ideation effectiveness, Shah, Vargas-Hernandez

The first course summary on the design an sustainability multidisciplinary class shows in part the potential of multi national collaborations when the combined resources result in the resolution of design problems. It is interesting that the course structure focused around a new product development process. The results of the class seem to have varied from the considered concepts with basis in the local community, to the broad concepts with only theoretical basis in the mexican environment.

My response to the study on creativity as a design criterion follows two main paths. First, I would agree with the conclusions that to a degree one can separate out creativity as a criterion for judgment and therefore rely on the homogenous nature of the judgment pool or common experience.

My response differs when I consider the effectiveness of solutions on the broader scale. Oftentimes the creative and novel approach to problem solving does not mean guaranteed success. I believe that is is possible for an unoriginal solution to succeed if execution of that idea transcends original or creative in terms of organization and consideration of extraneous factors.

The third study on metrics for measuring ideation effectiveness struck me as both relevant and slightly irrelevant. It was relevant when considered with the ultimate utility of being able to measure the effective use of "design space" and the ability to generate ideas efficiently. I felt that it was irrelevant when I applied it to my own personal ideation process. If my process falls short then I compensate by adjusting my own process and evaluate the effectiveness from there. I suppose from an empirical approach these metrics have precedent and utility, but it might take me a while to empirically adjust my own model for idea generation.