A short interview with Dorian Marjanović on research in design creativity: ‘A Search for a New Renaissance’

Abstract

Nowadays, we have plenty of channels where to share thoughts, experiences, ambitions, but most of these channels turn out to be ephemeral and evanescent. On the contrary, we believe that thoughts of knowledgeable people deserve to be digested and reflected upon with adequate time. For this reason, the International Journal of Design Creativity and Innovation will dedicate its next editorials to the publication of insights from prominent scholars in design science and creativity, with the aim of promoting a long-term discussion in our discipline. Recently, we had the chance to meet Prof. Dorian Marjanović at the International Workshop ‘Design Research – Sociotechnical Aspects of Quality, Creativity and Innovation’ organized by University of Zagreb. It was the perfect occasion to start our initiative and so we asked Prof. Marjanović to briefly share his thoughts on the most significant achievements of the research on design creativity in the last decades and on the current challenges that researchers working in the field of design creativity should address. His kind answers follow. Design is evolving. Moving from traditional categories to predominantly multidisciplinary projects dealing with service design, social systems, and complexity at a large scale, design is moving away from its product-focused origins. Acknowledging the contemporary aspects of design and the problems designers address, design creativity research is more than ever research of ”living things moving in a field”. Creativity in design arises from all the human experience gathered through knowledge of generations embedded in the ‘design experience’ of individuals. We may view design creativity research as an exploration of design experience and creation, an attempt to get a comprehensive insight into creativity, not constrained by by-product domains but rather as creativity engaged in a constant balancing act with functionality. Creativity with a desire to advance. Design creativity research is built on the complex inheritance of trans-disciplinary research in cognitive, business and management, education, social, art, and other disciplines. It is hard to outline all the overlapping and discrepancies in the research protocols, in the terminology, in the methodology as well as in the practical value of the research outcomes. While the research in cognitive sciences is oriented to metrics and measurement, educational and business disciplines tend to emphasise the enhancements of the creative potentials of individuals and groups. At the same time, design creativity research endeavours to develop models, theoretically sound with a practical implication that will enable a more efficient transformation of inspiration into substance. Considering the complexity of design as a discipline of developing ‘the new,’ the research outcomes unavoidably encompass only partial views, a brief image of ‘living things’ that will keep on moving long after the picture was taken. There is a significant body of research outcomes that analysed the creative processes of designers at the individual or team level. The abstracting ability of designers as well as the ability to see ‘a tree in a forest’ has been explored, and designers are welcomed in teams that develop processes and systems where they traditionally have not been involved. This multidisciplinary approach is also going in the other direction: non-design professionals take part in design teams. The influence and value of such team composition in collaborative innovation design projects and contributions to innovative solutions of non-designers are yet to be analysed. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF DESIGN CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION 2019, VOL. 7, NOS. 1–2, 1–2 https://doi.org/10.1080/21650349.2018.1542808