Mixplorer: Scafolding Design Space Exploration through Genetic Recombination of Multiple Peoples’ Designs to Support Novices’ Creativity

Abstract

The ability to consider a wide range of solutions to a design problem is a crucial skill for designers, and is a major diferentiator between experts and novices. One reason for this is that novices are unaware of the full extent of the design space in which solutions are situated. To support novice designers with design space exploration, we introduce Mixplorer, a system that allows designers to take an initial design and mix it with other designs. Mixplorer differs from existing tools by supporting the exploration of ill-defned design spaces through social design space exploration. To evaluate Mixplorer, we conducted (1) an interview study with design instructors who reported that Mixplorer would “help to open the minds” of novice designers and (2) a controlled experiment with novices, fnding that the design-mixing functionality of Mixplorer provided signifcantly better support for creativity, and that participants who mixed designs produced more novel designs.