The creativity of design practitioners responds to surprises with an iterative process that repeatedly reformulates a problem to find its core and then analyses possible solutions to find the most favourable, allowing for the formation of ‘creative bridges’ between problems and solutions.
(Calavia et al., 2021).
Dorst and Cross introduce the notion of surprise in the building of these ‘creative bridges’ by citing Schön (1983), and describe surprise as “the impetus that leads to framing and reframing” (Dorst, & Cross, 2001). That is, it is the impetus for the iterative cycles of exploration and sensemaking that describes the creative process of design. The notion of surprise is then correlated, by them, to the change in environment in the natural world that results in ‘bursts of development’ in the process of evolution rather than a slower moving gradual change. Although they introduced this concept to “suggest that creativity in the design process can validly be compared to such ‘bursts of development’” (Dorst, & Cross, 2001); in the two decades since that was written, the surprises in the natural world due to the ever increasing intensity and acuteness of changing climatic conditions are now so frequent that one question the resilience of the metaphor, and open it to interpretation in new ways.
Sustainable resilience is now being understood more broadly, as not just the ability to maintain essential function, identity, and structure, but also the capacity to learn and change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change defines resilience as “the capacity of social, economic and ecosystems to cope with a hazardous event or trend or disturbance, responding or reorganising in ways that maintain their essential function, identity and structure … while also maintaining the capacity for adaptation, learning and transformation”. (IPCC, 2022).
Social and economic systems comprise of more than just professional creatives such as design practitioners, and the organizations and institutions who can afford their services. Individual business owners such as micro-entrepreneurs, sole traders, and subsistence livelihood actors such as fishers, farmers, et al also contribute to resilient transformation of societies (see Ziervogel et al, 2015). Their capacity to respond to ‘surprises’ in the form of disruptive changes to their social and environment conditions requires a ‘burst of development’ of their creativity to formulate apposite proposals.
We suggest this ‘burst of development’ of individual creativity can be activated by introduction to the first principles of creative design. Systemic shocks that trigger disruptive changes to the operating environment – the “surprises” – can be responded to by extending the capacity for creative bridge building to non-designers as a means to navigate between the chasms of ever emerging problems and always required solutions in response to changing socio-environmental conditions. Surprise, here, then, to re-iterate Schön (1983), provides the impetus for a continuous process of learning and changing, grounded in the first principles of design, thereby providing for creative bridge building in turbulent conditions of uncertainty and volatility as a resilience strategy.
One could then problematize the collective experience of building of creative bridges together with non-designers as a sustainable strategy for societal resilience in the face of surprises (shocks), based on the first principles of design.
“The approach from design represents a differential advantage, both for the approach to the problem, and for the efficiency, affordability and adaptability of its tools.”
Calavia, Blanco, & Casas (2021)
The social design challenge then becomes one of how to build this creative bridge across boundaries of functional and demographic diversity that characterize non-designers at the grassroots of society, both urban and rural.
References
Calavia, M. B., Blanco, T., & Casas, R. (2021). Fostering creativity as a problem-solving competence through design: Think-Create-Learn, a tool for teachers. Thinking skills and creativity, 39, 100761.
Cross, N. (1982). Designerly ways of knowing. Design studies, 3(4), 221-227.
Cross, N. (1997). Creativity in design: analyzing and modeling the creative leap. Leonardo, 30(4), 311-317.
Dorst, K., & Cross, N. (2001). Creativity in the design process: co-evolution of problem–solution. Design studies, 22(5), 425-437.
Schön, D (1983) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think In Action,Basic Books, New York, NY, USA (1983)
Tang, M. (2019). Fostering creativity in intercultural and interdisciplinary teams: The VICTORY Model. Frontiers in psychology, 10, 2020.
