EXPANDING THE PARADIGM: BRINGING DESIGNERLY PERSPECTIVES INTO CREATIVITY SCHOLARSHIP

Danah Henriksen

doi:10.3846/cs.2019.6757

Abstract

Designerly ways of knowing have significant untapped potential to inform creativity research. In this article, I draw upon in-depth interviews with expert design scholars to examine this connection. Thematic analysis reveals how design offers potential lenses on creativity that are not often taken up in dominant psychological discourses around creativity. I situate this by framing the need for design-based knowledge within creativity literature. The findings reflect a view of creativity involving perception, intuition, and ability to re-see the world; creativity as an action-orientated phenomenon; and a focus on the ethics of creativity in an increasingly technology-empowered society. In exploring scholarly definitions of and views about creativity, there are insights on how design offers distinctive viewpoints for paradigms around creativity.

Highlights

The arena of creativity research has frequently been framed by dominant psychological perspectives, which often explore it from individualistic, internalized perspectives around creative ability, skills or potential (Cropley 2003)
Expertise is an inimitable phenomenon colored by the lens of individual experiences, and is often unique to individuals. These thematic insights, described suggest: the value of perception or intuition for creativity and creativity as re-thinking or re-seeing; the social and action-orientated nature of creativity; and the ethics of creativity. These ideas grounded in design perspectives may provide a sense of the nature of creativity as viewed in design – perspectives that may contribute to the dominant creativity discourses and provide creative education with a unique lens for understanding
The ethicality of creativity may be an avenue of consideration for broader creativity research – given greater voice by the Designerly ways of knowing (DWK). These themes suggest the potential of design to inform existing and future paradigms of creativity scholarship

Summary

Introduction

The arena of creativity research has frequently been framed by dominant psychological perspectives, which often explore it from individualistic, internalized perspectives around creative ability, skills or potential (Cropley 2003). I suggest that the common paradigms of creativity research and scholarship may be usefully informed by perspectives from the field of design. I draw upon two in-depth interviews with expert design scholars, Richard Buchanan (Case Western Reserve University) and Paul Pangaro (College of Creative Studies), to examine how themes from the field of design can inform creativity research. These two indepth interviews are a smaller part of a larger-scale ongoing inquiry into the perspectives of expert creativity scholars

Results

Discussion

Conclusion