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6.3 Some practical issues 1 75

So although creativity and invention are often wrapped in mystique, we do un-
derstand something of the process and of how creativity can be enhanced or in-
spired. We know, for instance, that browsing a collection of designs will inspire
designers to consider alternative perspectives, and hence alternative solutions. The
field of case-based reasoning (Maher and Pu, 1997) emerged from the observation
that designers solve new problems by drawing on knowledge gained from solving
previous similar problems. As Schank (1982; p. 22) puts it, "An expert is someone
who gets reminded of just the right prior experience to help him in processing his
current experiences." And while those experiences may be the designer's own, they
can equally well be others'.
A more pragmatic answer to this question, then, is that alternatives come from
looking at other, similar designs, and the process of inspiration and creativity can
be enhanced by prompting a designer's own experience and by looking at others'
ideas and solutions. Deliberately seeking out suitable sources of inspiration is a
valuable step in any design process. These sources may be very close to the in-
tended new product, such as competitors' products, or they may be earlier versions
of similar systems, or something completely different.

nsider again the calendar system introduced at the beginning of the chapter. Reflecting
the process again, what do you think inspired your outline design? See if you can identify
any elements within it that you believe are truly innovative.

Comment For my design, I haven't seen an electronic calendar, although I have seen plenty of other
software-based systems. My main sources of inspiration were my current paper-based books.
Some of the things you might have been thinking of include your existing paper-based
calendar, and other pieces of software you commonly use and find helpful or easy to use in
some way. Maybe you already have access to an electronic calendar, which will have given
you some ideas, too. However, there are probably other aspects that make the design some-
how unique to you and may be innovative to a greater or lesser degree.

All this having been said, under some circumstances the scope to consider alterna-
tive designs may be limited. Design is a process of balancing constraints and con-
stantly trading off one set of requirements with another, and the constraints may be
such that there are very few viable alternatives available. As another example, if
you are designing a software system to run under the Windows operating system,
then elements of the design will be prescribed because you must conform to the
Windows "look and feel," and to other constraints intended to make Windows pro-
grams consistent for the user. We shall return to style guides and standards in
Chapter 8.
If you are producing an upgrade to an existing system, then you may face other
constraints, such as wanting to keep the familiar elements of it and retain the same
"look and feel." However, this is not necessarily a rigid rule. Kent Sullivan reports
that when designing the Windows 95 operating system to replace the Windows 3.1
and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 operating systems, they initially focused too
much on consistency with the earlier versions (Sullivan, 1996).