Studying the appearance and effect of creativity within the latter stages of the product development process

This paper presents a framework and coding scheme for identifying creative design approaches, particularly towards the end of the design process. These were evaluated using five undergraduate students over a 22 week individual project. The designers either followed a routine approach (using well-understood schemes), an opportunistic approach (developing creative results through changes in how they apply the available variables to the task), or an astute approach (developing creative results by changing the variables themselves). The coding scheme allows greater understanding of the creative design process, which will then be used to improve support for designers, to the benefit of their working style and project.