Exploring design space representations for design creativity research and education

‘Thinking outside the box’ is an often used metaphor to urge people to be creative. However there is limited understanding in general discourse of what this box actually is. This work investigates how the concept of design spaces is employed in design creativity research and education. To do so, a literature review focussed on the design space concept both within the design discipline and beyond it. This provides a starting point to understand current approaches to creating and representing design spaces. From the insights drawn from the literature, a novel semi-automated method for the creation of design space visualisations, DS-Viz, is developed. The method, the visualisations it generates and its validation routines are demonstrated with the GAP dataset collated from a game-based experiment. Then, DS-Viz is further extended and adapted to tackle the analysis of different design datasets available in the literature. With the method consolidated, the focus shifts to the reporting of a preregistered, game-based study, which was conducted to investigate the impact of different modalities of feedback (solution performance feedback and creative feedback) on participants’ design process. The mixed-methods analysis showcases the different influences the feedback modalities have on the participants. The design space visualisations illustrate the patterns of exploration that participants engaged in. To further explore these aspects, a range of smaller scale studies were conducted, including expert interviews, an academic workshop on design spaces at a conference and an investigation of the potential of large language models to support the creation of design spaces. The insights from the research, and particularly the academic workshop, were translated into an open educational activity released online. Overall, the systematic investigation of design space representations in the context of design creativity contributes to the discussion of design creativity concepts, such as design fixation and design co-evolution. Furthermore, the novel method and the open educational resource are clear contributions that translate research insights to educational practice. In summary, the work has provided new ways to think and talk about creativity, which is of benefit to design research and education.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Paravizo, Esdras

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Crilly, Nathan

• Design spaces
• Design creativity
• Design education

Licence

• https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/29e860cb-14fe-431c-88fe-cc2e044e8274/download
• https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Language dc:language

eng

Author Identifier

0000-0001-6579-0531

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/399262