Understanding design as a social creative process

The Human-Computer Interaction community has long been concerned with design. Terms such as 'creativity' and 'innovation' are frequently used when referring to the design process and in this paper we examine what creativity is with respect to design. Design is often a collaborative and, therefore, a social activity. We review the evolution of definitions of creativity, leading to our proposal of a unified definition, we present a theoretical account of why social creativity should in principle be more productive than individual creativity. We explain findings to the contrary in terms of three social influences on creativity and suggest that research in supporting design should focus on mitigating the effects of these social influences on the creativity of design teams.