A team led by Glaveanu has studied the implications of working with others or alone on creative and practical thinking. Their findings have implications for the sorts of spaces (individual/for use by two people/etc.) provided in a variety of settings, for example, and also for managing the design process, for instance. The researchers report that, “the aim of this article is to examine the creative process in the case of individuals and dyads in relation to the originality and practicality of their ideas… [data gathered] suggested that people working together might prefer practical ideas. This preliminary evidence of a possible ‘practicality effect,’ we speculate, has something to do with the fact that practical ideas are easier to communicate and validate when collaborating. As such, creativity is not necessarily hindered by working with other people but takes on a different orientation (i.e., toward the feasible).”
Vlad Glaveanu, Alex Gillespie, and Marciej Kanwowski. 2019. “Are People Working Together Incline Towards Practicality? A Process Analysis of Creative Ideation in Individuals and Dyads.” Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, vol. 13, no. 4, pp. 388-401, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/aca0000171
Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.