Design Flow and Ideation

Abstract

In the last year, we developed the Hybrid Ideation Space (HIS), an innovative immersive sketching and model-making system that augments analog tools with digital capabilities, for continue and direct reflective conversation with the representation. The system enables designers to sketch and make models all around them in real-time and real scale using a digital tablet (sketches), image capture (physical models) and a spherical projection device (immersion). Teams of industrial design students participated in the study working on the initial stages of the design of a car. This is a comparative study putting side by side the HIS, analog tools and hybrid modeling techniques. We developed the notion of Design Flow to assesses the design ideation process. The students reported being in the state of flow more often in the HIS than with digital or physical modeling.