Use and Influence of Creative Ideas and Requirements for a Work-Integrated Learning System

In this paper, we describe a creativity workshop that was used in a large research project, called APOSDLE, to generate creative ideas and requirements for a work-integrated learning system. We present an analysis of empirical data collected during and after the workshop. On the basis of this analysis, we conclude that the work-shop was an efficient way of generating ideas for future system development. These ideas, on average, were used at least as much as requirements from other sources in writing use cases, and 18 months after the workshop were seen to have a similar degree of influence on the project to other requirements. We make some observations about the use of more and less creative ideas, and about the techniques used to generate them. We end with suggestions for further work.

[1]  Neil A. M. Maiden,et al.  Provoking Creativity: Imagine What Your Requirements Could Be Like , 2004, IEEE Softw..

[2]  Eamonn O'Neill,et al.  Understanding design as a social creative process , 2005, C&C '05.

[3]  Henri Poincaré,et al.  The foundations of science , 2022 .

[4]  Neil A. M. Maiden,et al.  Integrating creativity workshops into structured requirements processes , 2004, DIS '04.

[5]  Nathalie Bonnardel,et al.  Creativity in design activities: the role of analogies in a constrained cognitive environment , 1999, Creativity & Cognition.

[6]  D. M. Berry,et al.  Requirements Engineering and Creativity : An Innovative Approach Based on a Model of the Pragmatics of Communication , 2004 .

[7]  Nigel Cross,et al.  Creative cognition in design: processes of exceptional designers , 2002, Creativity & Cognition.

[8]  Connie Heitmeyer counterpoint System Designers, Not Analysts, Should Design , 2005 .

[9]  Neil A. M. Maiden,et al.  Integrating creativity into requirements processes: experiences with an air traffic management system , 2005, 13th IEEE International Conference on Requirements Engineering (RE'05).

[10]  A. Osborn Applied imagination : principles and procedures of creative problem-solving , 1957 .

[11]  Terri Gullickson The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms. , 1995 .

[12]  Sara Jones,et al.  Using a Creativity Workshop to Generate Requirements for an Event Database Application , 2008, REFSQ.

[13]  Sara Jones,et al.  Rescue an integrated method for specifying requirements for complex sociotechnical systems , 2005 .

[14]  R. Sternberg,et al.  The concept of creativity: Prospects and paradigms. , 1998 .

[15]  Neil A. M. Maiden,et al.  Can Requirements Be Creative? Experiences with an Enhanced Air Space Management System , 2007, 29th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE'07).

[16]  Klaus Schmid A Study on Creativity in Requirements Engineering , 2005 .

[17]  Connie Heitmeyer System designers, not analysts, should design : Requirements for design and innovation in a changing world , 2005 .

[18]  M. Boden The Creative Mind , 1991 .