Breaking the dilemma between robustness and generativeness: a comparative experiment on the use of new design software at the design-gap

Are creative designers doomed to loose in creativity when integrated in NPD processes? While a lot of studies point the necessity to achieve both creativity and feasibility, it remains hard to make more than a frustrating trade off. Still a new generation of design software have recently been proposed to better integrate industrial designers in engineering design processes. Based on a comparative experiment, we show that some of these tools enable to break the dilemma between creativity and robustness. Focusing on the design gap, a sample of 6 industrial designers was asked to design from a handmade rough sketch a 3D-digital object integrated in a CAD software suite. We compare the performance in term of gain or loss of originality and robustness (measured by 5 independent experts) between the uses of two representative digital design tools. It appears that the use of one of the software significantly increased simultaneously to Generativeness and Robustness of a design. It confirms that it is possible to ground creativity on constraint and show the possibility of new design processes characterized by their capacity to avoid loss in Originality and to improve what we call an "acquired creativity" all along the design process.