MOD: Stimulating Creative Insight - A Cohesive Model of Design Innovation Across Individuals, Groups and Computer Agents

创新发生在设计师的头脑中，在设计团队中，在计算设计引擎中，每一个都有功能上的相似性。该项目通过正式理解个体认知在群体环境中的作用及其与提高创新过程的计算模拟的关系，研究创造力和创新的关键要素。对这些相互作用的检查揭示了这些复杂的认知和社会相互作用的结构中的巨大一致性，并且将该结构的形式及其运作的动态阐明为创新过程的模型是本项目的主要目标。本研究将显著影响工业环境中设计创新的结构和追求。因此，这一独特的跨学科研究在创新领域是一个合适的匹配我校的使命。这个项目基于这样的假设：作为团队努力的一部分，个人正在解决一个困难的设计问题。通常情况下，在个体心理表征中进行迭代搜索会有所改进，但不会在该表征中产生满足设计目标的解决方案。在这一点上，个人陷入了僵局或障碍。为了克服僵局，必须出现一种新的表现形式，这种表现形式是通过寻找一种新的表现形式以及来自环境的输入来实现的。在个人层面上，僵局可以在解决过程中的适当时间通过适当的刺激来克服，不要太早也不要太晚。该模型假定团队成员协作开发一种公共表示，在这种表示中可以找到解决方案。个体的表述影响其他群体成员的表述，并对整体群体表述做出贡献，群体讨论刺激个体和有效群体表述的变化，群体输入作为外部环境刺激来克服上述僵局。然后，个人与团队合作并发展自己的表现形式，有时与团队合作，在寻找设计任务的解决方案时挑战和扩展团队的表现形式。软件代理可以模拟和支持组过程，提供对过程的更深入的理解，并在创新层面上创建一种新型的设计辅助工具。软件代理使用给定的表示，但基于协作策略，该表示可以随着代理作为一个团队一起工作而演变。本研究发展：(1)对整个设计过程中常见的结构和动态操作的理解；(2)更好地理解人类如何解决复杂的设计问题；(3)更深入地了解人们如何表示设计问题，以及改变问题表示的结果方法，从而找到创造性的解决方案；(4)建立在这些发现基础上的计算机工具，以改进对设计问题的搜索；(5)理解个体问题解决与群体问题解决之间的关系；(6)组设计过程的方法和算法；(7)新的方法来帮助人类在创造过程中，无论是作为个人，还是通过更有效地将团队中的个人联系起来，作为团队，从而赋予这一过程权力；(8)设计中基于经验的个人和群体认知理论模型的出现。更深入地理解个人如何参与和适应创造性的团队问题解决，以及团队如何发展成为一个更高效的个体集合，是这项工作的一个更广泛的成果。认知理解将告知对创造性问题解决的认知的基本理解，特别是设计。基于设计代理的计算工具可以有效地生成创新的解决方案。

Innovation occurs within the minds of designers, within design teams and within computational design engines, each having functional similarities. This project studies the critical elements of creativity and innovation by formally understanding the role of individual cognition in group environments and its relation to computational simulations of the process to enhance the innovation process. An examination of these interactions reveals a great congruence in the structuring of these complex cognitive and social interactions, and the elucidation of the form of that structure and the dynamics of its operation into a model of the innovation process is the major goal of this project. This study could significantly influence how design innovation is structured and pursued in industrial settings. As such, this unique interdisciplinary research in the area of innovation is an appropriate match to the SciSIP mission. This project rests on the assumption that an individual is working on a difficult design problem as part of a team effort. Often, iterative search within an individual mental representation makes improvements but yields no solution within that representation that meets the design goals. At that point the individual reaches an impasse or block. To overcome the impasse a new representation must emerge, one that occurs through search for a new representation coupled with inputs from the environment. At the individual level impasses can be overcome by appropriate stimuli at the appropriate time in the solution process, not too early and not too late. The model posits that team members collaborate to develop a common representation within which a solution is found. The individual's representations influence other group members' representations and contribute to the overall group representation, and group discussions stimulate changes to both the individual and effective group representation, the group inputs acting as the external environmental stimuli to overcome the impasses mentioned above. Individuals then work with and develop their own representation, and at times collaborate with the group to both challenge and expand the group's representation as they search for solutions to the design task. Software agents can emulate and support the group process, providing deeper understanding of the process and means to create a new type of design assist tools at the innovation level. The software agents use a given representation but, based on collaborative strategies, that representation can evolve as the agents work together as a team. This study develops: (1) an understanding of the common structural and dynamic operations that occur throughout the design process; (2) a better understanding of how humans solve difficult design problems; (3) a deeper understanding of how people represent design problems and a resultant method for changing representations of a problem so as to find creative solutions; (4) a computer tools that build on these findings to improve search of a design problem; (5) an understanding of the relationship between individual problem solving and group problem solving; (6) a methodology and algorithm for group design processes; (7) new methods to assist humans in the creative process both as individuals and, through more efficaciously linking individuals within teams, as teams, so as to empower that process; and (8) the emergence of an empirically anchored theoretical model of individual and group cognition in design. Formalizing a deeper understanding of how individuals participate and adapt in creative team problem solving, and how the team develops into a more efficient set of individuals is one broader outcome of this work. The cognitive understanding will inform the fundamental understanding of the cognition of creative problem solving and in particular design. Computational tools based on design agents can effectively generate innovative solutions.