TY - JOUR
T1 - Capturing and Revisiting Ideas in the Design Process
T2 - A Longitudinal Technology Probe Study
AU - Dalsgaard, Peter
AU - Biskjaer, Michael Mose
AU - Frich, Jonas
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors
PY - 2023/9
Y1 - 2023/9
N2 - Managing ideas is a central activity of professional designers and an essential element in the creative design process. However, while designers use a diverse range of tools to capture, manage, and recollect ideas, they often lack well-established and proven efficient routines for doing so. To better understand how these idea-centered design processes play out and, potentially, might be improved, we conducted a longitudinal study with ten professional designers where we deployed a technology probe in the form of an app, Recollect, to explore critical aspects of their idea management practices. Based on weekly interviews, we contribute four central insights, which pairwise form two current tensions related to idea capture and idea recollection among designers. These two tensions are that 1) designers have similar conceptions of what constitutes a good design idea, but have very diverse practices for working with ideas; and that 2) designers find value in revisiting ideas, but lack structured and efficient approaches for doing so. We discuss the implications of these findings, and we propose that the complexity of designers' idea management practices call for more research.
AB - Managing ideas is a central activity of professional designers and an essential element in the creative design process. However, while designers use a diverse range of tools to capture, manage, and recollect ideas, they often lack well-established and proven efficient routines for doing so. To better understand how these idea-centered design processes play out and, potentially, might be improved, we conducted a longitudinal study with ten professional designers where we deployed a technology probe in the form of an app, Recollect, to explore critical aspects of their idea management practices. Based on weekly interviews, we contribute four central insights, which pairwise form two current tensions related to idea capture and idea recollection among designers. These two tensions are that 1) designers have similar conceptions of what constitutes a good design idea, but have very diverse practices for working with ideas; and that 2) designers find value in revisiting ideas, but lack structured and efficient approaches for doing so. We discuss the implications of these findings, and we propose that the complexity of designers' idea management practices call for more research.
KW - creativity
KW - design process(es)
KW - design studies
KW - design tools
KW - human–computer interaction
U2 - 10.1016/j.destud.2023.101200
DO - 10.1016/j.destud.2023.101200
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85162126645
SN - 0142-694X
VL - 88
JO - Design Studies
JF - Design Studies
M1 - 101200
ER -