Computer supported creative design : a pragmatic approach

Creativity is recognizable only in a given context thereby making its definition elusive. In design, creativity in a domain may depend on characteristics of the process or the product, or both. In this paper, we argue that a better understanding of creativity can occur by focusing on the conditions that allow for creative acts. With respect to design research, we believe that it would be most productive to create computer supported design environments that stress the complementary nature of human and computer design capabilities. These capabilities and their relationships are reviewed to identify some of the critical issues in designing and building such environments. We argue for building such integrated design environments in order to empirically test and evaluate hypotheses about design processes and creativity in the context of real design tasks. In this regard we discuss LOOS: a partially automated approach for the design of layouts which illustrates some of the features desired for a computational design support environment.