Design, ergonomics and user interfaces: complementary and interdisciplinary studies to enhance creative activities

Given the challenges associated with the activities of creative design, we first outline characteristics of these activities. Then, we describe several experimental studies, performed in order to deepen the impact of the presentation of certain stimuli (consisting of images or words) on the evocation process of participants having more or less of expertise in design (novice, experienced or professional). We then present two computational design environments that resume some aspects pointed out during the experimental studies: the TRENDS system and SKIPPI system, which respectively allow designers-users to have access to either images or words. Ergonomic studies are finally performed on the use of each of these systems. Thus, this article allows us to show the importance of multidisciplinary work combining ergonomics, design and development of computer systems.