Impact of technical information in magic-based inspiration tools on novice designers

Abstract

There is a growing concern for design students to gain basic technological knowledge for design in real practice. While there is abundance of tools for creativity, technical information has never been implemented as inspiration for ideas. In this paper, to answer the demand of creativity tools with real practice, we created magic-based inspirational cards that contain technical clues of how each magic effect can be created in products. Two versions of the tools were compared: Magic cards (only illustration of magic effects) and Technical cards (illustration of magic effects with additional technical clues). The tools were evaluated with thirty novice designers in two design sessions. In the first session, they were asked to generate design ideas in a design task. Then a week later, they were divided into three groups, control group, Magic cards, and Technical cards. The experimental groups were asked to use the cards as a source of inspiration and to generate design ideas in the same design task. The ideas generated by the participants were assessed in terms of creativity and intended user experience (UX). The findings show that the use of both types of magic-based cards resulted in significantly higher scores in originality and flexibility of ideation. Also, the use of Technical cards led to significantly higher intended UX scores. The analysis of products’ behaviors (outputs) showed a significant increase of physical outputs when magic-based inspiration is provided. Our study suggested that, for novice design students, the Magic Effects set together with technological clues could enhance creativity in ideation.