Reading Responses

Teaching Multinational, Multidisciplinary Sustainable Product Development

I believe that teaching a multinational course to students headed into design fields is extremely valuable, because it will instill in the next generation of designers a degree of sensitivity that is necessary when creating solutions for cultures other than their own. It will also open their minds to the idea of collaborating, as opposed to imposing their own ideas on different cultures.

Metrics for Measuring Ideation Effectiveness

Attempting to quantifiably measure what is in essence completely subjective and open to interpretation does not make sense to me. As someone mentioned in class, I believe that it is not the nature of the idea that needs to be evaluated; it is whether or not the implementation of that idea is effective that is what matters. Furthermore, the ideas generated in a controlled or simulated setting will be entirely different from the ideas generated in another context. Even if the evaluation method that is proposed is effective, I would be wary of the information gained in a “lab” setting vs. in a real-world setting.

Creativity as a Design Criterion

I believe that the results of this study are a further indication that it is futile to attempt to quantify subjective concepts such as creativity. The study found that, even among design experts, there was little agreement over which designs were most creative. What strikes and inspires people is a result of their own personal experiences and interests. Having said that, it would be interesting to see if there are cultural differences between people’s evaluation of certain designs. Learning what people of a certain culture gravitate to could be a useful tool when attempting to create products for cultures outside of our own.