This study hopes to make a correlation between wit and design innovation ability.
Wit, being the ability to perceive in an ingeniously humorous manner the
relationship between seemingly incongruous things (Morris, 1976), and not simply
the ability to be funny. Wit also implies intentional creation while humor does not
(Bergen, 2008). A previous study found a correlation between wit and creativity and
determined that creativity was the single best predictor of wit (Clabby, 1980). I
might argue that creativity and wit are not entirely exclusive traits and that they
might be the same thing with different names. Creative people might not know that
they are witty and witty people might not know that they are creative. I might also
argue that anyone is capable of being both creative and witty. In this study, we will
address wit as innovation in the realm of language. We believe that those
individuals that are good innovators with language should also be good
innovators in the area of design and idea generation (i.e. those that can quickly
make non-obvious connections between seemingly unrelated things in one domain
should be able to do the same in other domains).
We developed a tool called Association Mapping (Ludden, Kudrowitz, 2007) that we
believe can help and train people to be both innovative with language as well as
design. Wit is both a trait and a process (Feingold 1993), which suggests that it is
possible to be learned. And similarly, creative thinking can be learned by means of
divergent thinking exercises (Fink 2008). The tool is based on free association in
mind mapping where a concept or item is placed in the center of a page and
attributes related to that entity are written around it. Words that describe each
attribute are written and then further associations are made from those words. This
method is a bit more structured than the free association mapping presented by
Michalko (1991) and it also adds the element of mapping back to the original
domain. When one maps back to a different suggested domain this is similar to the
method of Brute Think or our method, as applied to product design, Crossing
Products. In any form, this way of associative thinking can help the design engineer
address a problem in non-obvious manners. It also has potential to make people be
wittier.
This study will 1) determine if there is a relationship between wit and
innovativeness in product design 2) determine if association mapping is an effective
means of making people more witty as well as more innovative designers.
Experiment Description
To begin this study, we examine the relationship between an individual’s ability to
produce a punch line to a familiar joke “set-up” and that individual’s performance in
an individual Brainstorming/Brainwriting session.
Wittiness Evaluation
In the few studies that have dealt with creation of humor (Treadwell 1970, Clabby
1980, Feingold 1993) the test involves adding a funny caption to a caption-stripped
cartoon. This method is acceptable but we believe that there is a better alternative.
Creating a funny caption does not necessarily mean being witty or making nonobvious connections between unrelated items. One can create a funny caption
based irony and not associations. Having a cartoon also allows for many directions,
which could make it hard to compare the funniness. This test, however, could be
administered in addition to our punch line test.
In the punch line creation test, the participant will be given the “set up” line: A
____________ walks into a bar and the bartender says, “I can’t serve you
because____________.” The examiner will state the subject matter that will walk into
the bar and the participant has a given amount of time (3 minutes) to come up with
as many punch lines as they can for that subject. The reason that this joke in
particular is used for this experiment is that the format is familiar to the general
public, open ended, and adaptable. The fact that it involves a bar brings with it a
tone that anything is appropriate. It also is quite short and typically leads to
associations involving the subject of the joke and something related to a bar.
Subjects will be presented with the prompt that they are participating in a study on
humor and creativity and that this particular segment deals with joke creation. They
will be told that it does not matter if the punch lines they think of are silly, not
overly stimulating, or inappropriate. They should write any punch line that comes
to mind. They are told that they should try to come up with as many punch lines as
they can and that they will have several (3) minutes for each subject. Each
participant will be given five* subjects that walk into the bar one at a time in a
varied order. Possible things to walk into a bar could be: elephant, penguin, lawyer,
doctor, engineer, giraffe, magician, frat boy, football player, caveman, artist, police
officer, stripper, the president, frog, broom, computer, robot etc. A pretest found
that penguin, magician, caveman, pirate, and computer produced the most varied
and numerous responses from a group of 4 males and 4 females ranging from 18-28
years of age in various degrees of study. In this pretest, 7/8 participants did not
develop any new punch lines after 3 minutes. The one participant that did produce
punch lines after 3 minutes went until 5 minutes, however, most of the coherent
punch lines were developed within the 3-minute time. (*We will need to have 10
subject options and randomly select 5 for each participant)
Participants’ unique responses will be counted (quantity) and the funniness (or
innovativeness) of the punch lines will be measured afterward by the average
scores of a panel of unbiased individual reviewers. Rating of funniness should be
based on a set scale (perhaps 5 point) as opposed to a ranking, a decibel laugh
measure, or a binary funny/not funny (Feingold 1993). The joke punch lines are to
be digitized with grammar corrected. When reviewers rate the punch lines, they
should read all the jokes from the same theme in a random order with repeated
punch lines removed. Reviewers should do the rating individually where they
cannot influence other reviewers. At least 20(?) people of different backgrounds,
gender, and age should review. This should take into account punch lines that are
targeted for different audiences.
Developing a joke punch line could be viewed as the same process as innovating
around a given prompt. In both situations, the individual is attempting to make nonobvious connections between seemingly unrelated things. Based on the two-stage
model for joke appreciation, what makes a joke funny is the amount that the punch
line violates the recipient’s expectations while assuming the recipient is still able to
make sense of the information (Suls 1972). When the connections are too obvious,
then it would not be considered innovative or funny (i.e. the bartender says “I can’t
serve you because you are a computer and computers can’t drink?”).
Product Innovation Test
To compare an individual’s wittiness with their product design innovation abilities,
there are several possible tests to administer for the latter (Torrance Tests of
Creativity Thinking, the Mednick’s Remote Associates Test, Guilford’s divergent
production test, Alternative Uses, 30 Circles, etc). Many of these creativity tests are
not specific to product design innovation and so in this study, we will ask the
participants to individually brainstorm innovative redesigns of everyday products.
Such products could include: toasters, umbrellas, toilets, toothbrushes, garbage
pails, beds, lamps, backpacks, shoes, pens, etc. The ten products that are chosen
should cover a wide range of interests and have a large open-ended solution space.
Each participant will be asked to brainstorm on a random selection of five of the ten
products, one at a time.
In the individual brainstorm, the participant will be given a stack of paper and a
marker. They will be told that they have five minutes to come up with as many ideas
as they can that address the prompt. They will be told that each new idea should be
sketched on a separate piece of paper and given a short title. They should sketch all
ideas even if they deem them to be silly, inappropriate or uncreative. They should
also be told that drawing ability does not count and that stick figures are acceptable.
A good idea generation session is characterized by many ideas, feasible ideas,
creative ideas, and sometimes the variety of ideas (Butler and Kline, 1998, Shah and
Vargas 2002). In some experiments (Rietzschel, Nijstad and Stroebe, 2003, Amabile
1982, Fink Naubauer 2008) an unbiased expert panel measures these three
characteristics after an idea generation session on a score from 1-5 from not
original/feasible to highly original/feasible. Others argue that it is best to count the
number of original or feasible ideas to avoid the influence of a large number of bad
ideas (Reinig and Briggs, 2006). In this study, we will have a review panel, made up
of 5-7 designers and design instructors, assign a score from 1-5 for creativity and
feasibility to each idea drawing. Prior to rating, the panel will agree upon a
standard for what a 1, 3 and 5 score would be. Reviewer scores will be added or
averaged. If added, a large number of bad ideas are helpful and if averaged, a large
number of bad ideas will lower the overall score. If we have reviewers count the
number of novel/useful instead, each participant’s ideas must be kept together as a
packet and not randomized.
A forth rating should be added addressing the funniness of the product idea. Low
scores on feasibility and high scores on novelty do not necessarily designate a
humorous idea. Good engineering design should be both feasible and novel (Shah
and Vargas, 2002), but could also be humorous.
Each participant’s scores for punch line quantity and funniness will be compared to
their scores on the brainstorming test. The order of testing should alternate for
subjects, as subjects that take the punch line test prior to the brainstorming test
might have higher creativity scores from the positive affect associated with joking
around (Isen 1987).
To see if Association Mapping influences innovation and wit, this same series of
tests should be administered to a second, different group of individuals. These
participants would be taught the method prior to testing. The reviewers will not
know which ideas or punch lines came from participants that were taught the
association mapping technique.
Experiment Logistics
Overall, These tests should be administered to 96 people:
-24 without Association Map instruction with punch line test prior to brainstorming,
-24 with Association Map instruction with punch line test prior to brainstorming,
-24 without Association Map instruction with brainstorming prior to punch line test,
-24 with Association Map instruction with brainstorming prior to punch line test
In each group, 6 subjects should be senior students in engineering/design related
majors and 6 subjects should be freshmen undecided on major/interest. We would
also like to test if known innovative product designers are witty and known witty
individuals have innovative design abilities. In each group, 6 subjects should be
known innovative designers from the design industry, and 6 subjects should be
known witty improvisational comedians. Ideally, the number of participants will be
equally split by gender.
After the testing, we can ask the participants a series of questions that can be used
to access the playfulness of the activity as well as their opinions of themselves and
their experience with idea generation.
Survey questions could include:
Age, Gender, Have you participated in a brainstorming session before?
SELF-REFLECTING QUESTIONS: Are you creative? Are you artistic? Are you a funny
person? Are you happy with the punch lines you created? Are you happy with the
brainstormed ideas you came up with?
PLAY RELATED QUESTIONS: Was this more like play or more like work? Was this
enjoyable? Did you find this stressful? Did you treat this as a game? Were you fully
absorbed into the activity putting aside other thoughts and worries about daily life?
Would you do this again? What made this activity seem like play? What made this
activity seem like work? How would you make it more playful? How would you
make it more like work?
We can see if any qualities of play correlate with each other and with the quantity,
novelty and usefulness of the ideas generated in the brainstorm. I would expect that
those who found the experience enjoyable and more like play and were fully
absorbed in the activity would have produced more and more novel ideas. We can
also see if any of these qualities correlate with the punch line creation test. As we
are not able to pinpoint play behavior from a cognitive science point of view, we
could also avoid the play areas for this round of testing and focus mainly on humor
and innovation.
The entire test should take approximately an hour for each participant (54-67
minutes). The introduction should take approximately 10 minutes for those with
Association Mapping training and 2 minutes for those without the training. The
brainstorming session should take 26 minutes for all five topics and the punch line
creation session should take 16 minutes for all five subjects. There will also be 1015 minutes allotted for completing the survey at the end.
Additional thoughts
I believe that individuals, both students and professionals, regardless of
background, who are wittier, will produce more novel and useful concepts in a
brainstorming session. There is a chance, however, that the wittiness correlates
with concepts that rate high on creativity but low on feasibility. A high number level
of wittiness should also correlate with a high number of funny product ideas. These
witty less feasible or useful concepts are sometimes termed aesthetic innovation,
“unuseless,” Chindogu, or Novelty Items. High quantity of punch lines should
correlate with a high quantity of ideas in a brainstorm session. This is not to say
that “funny people” are more creative, but that witty people are innovative people.
People that can manipulate language quickly and in unexpected manners should
also be able to manipulate concepts for design innovation assuming they have some
general knowledge of the subject matter. If this is true, perhaps there will be larger
incentive to use joke theory based tools like Association Mapping in design process.
If the punch line test proves to be a good predictor of innovative thinking, it could be
used as another test for wit or creativity.
Cognitive Science and FMRI
To move into the realm of cognitive science and neurology, dopamine is closely
related to creative thought, mainly the process of making non-obvious connections
and associations (Flaherty 2005). Humor, in response to funny cartoons as well as
comprehension of puns and jokes are in close relation with the creativity, the right
hemisphere and release of dopamine (Fink, 2008). People with low amounts of
dopamine are typically depressed and can develop Parkinson’s disease. People with
too much dopamine are psychotic and take associative thought to a higher level
making ridiculous associations between things and accepting them to be true.
Dopamine is not the only factor controlling creative thought, but it does play a large
role in association making (which is potentially a large part of innovation). Perhaps
things that stimulate dopamine production would stimulate innovative thinking,
such as candy, drugs, hugs, kind words, scary movies, jokes, sex, etc. This could be a
step in the direction of scientifically proving that joking around and “playing” leads
to a more creative environment. Maybe all brainstorm sessions should begin with a
group hug.
There have been studies performed to understand what is going on in the brain
when a person comprehends a joke (Bartolo, Benuzzi etc 2006, Taber, Redden
Hurley 2007) but no fMRI studies dealing specifically with joke creation. However,
there is an fMRI study that investigates what happens in the brain when novel
connections are made between unrelated words (Mashal et al, 2007). In essence,
this is exactly what we are doing when developing a punch line for a joke or perhaps
when innovating new design concepts. Verbal creativity, as they call it, could be
defined as the ability to construct novel connections or associations between words
and to integrate their meanings. This novel construction takes place in the right
posterior superior temporal sulcus (PSTS) (Mashal et al, 2007). This area is
homologous with Wernicke’s area, which is claimed by Flaherty as the area that
needs to function for successful linguistic creativity (Flaherty, 2005).
The temporal Lobe plays a large role in metaphoric thought, but it is a combination
of three areas that contribute to creative drive: frontal, temporal and limbic systems
(Flaherty 2005). The frontal lobe is mentioned often in other studies as linked with
creativity. The generation of original ideas as well as divergent thinking is
associated with alpha synchronization in frontal brain regions and a diffuse and
widespread pattern of alpha synchronization over parietal cortical regions which
agrees with Jung-Beeman’s AHA! Expereience (Fink et al, 2008). A low cortical
arousal or high alpha activity is typical of creative thinking and novel idea
generation. Creative thinking involves the coordination between the frontal and
posterior parietal cortical areas (Fink et al, 2008). Creative storytelling and making
distant associations takes places in the prefrontal areas of the right hemisphere as
well as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). (Howard-Jones et al, 2005).
Metaphorical Design
Stuff on the back burner…
Connecting Play Qualities with Creativity
It is believed that when people are playing they are more creative. There have been
several studies that address this topic. In a child study, they found that children
who are engaging in fantasy play found more uses for a certain object than when
they were not engaging in fantasy play. Assuming that play is partially qualified by
positive affect, Isen found that people who are with positive affect are better at
solving anagram puzzles.
There are several views on what exactly defines play. In Huizinga’s book Homo
Ludens, he defines play by how our culture refers to it and not based on any
cognitive science reasoning. There are 10 claims that he makes in different forms
that seem to capture the essence. Play is enjoyable. Play is captivating (the player is
intensely absorbed into the activity). Play is outside ordinary life (players enter a
temporary sphere of internal reality). Play is superfluous (it does not contribute to
necessary life processes and performed for its own sake). Play is voluntary or
intrinsically motivated. Play is process and not product focused. Play is active. Play
is flexible. Play is rule governed. Play is limited in time and space (playground,
playtime).
Several of these qualities seem to overlap and most are hard to test for in an
experiment. If we are not yet able to pinpoint what defines play from a cognitive
science approach, we can always use several of these key qualities and ask
participants if they think they are playing (or perhaps working). Fantasy play is
easy to observe in children but quite hard to observe or inspire in adults.
Drawing Quality and Perceived Idea Innovativeness
Somewhat related is drawing ability and creativity.
A past study by Yang and Cham looked at the relationship between sketching skill
and engineering design performance and found no conclusive correlation between
sketching skill and design outcome. This would mean that a good design engineer
doesn’t necessarily have to be a good sketcher. However, there could be a
relationship between the quality of a sketch and the perceived innovativeness of the
concept. There could also be a correlation between the artistic ability of the person
and their creativity.
I believe that a poorly drawn innovative concept will be perceived as less creative
than a well made drawing of the same innovative concept. Oppositely, a well-drawn
sketch of an uncreative/common/trite concept should be perceived as more
innovative than a poorly drawn sketch of that same concept. If we find a correlation
between perceived innovativeness and quality of the sketch, this would be a strong
incentive for innovative engineers to be trained to make high quality, clear sketches.
This could also explain help to explain why design teams discard “good” ideas in the
early ideation stages of design.
This concept could be carried over into later stages of design and marketing as well.
Products that have more aesthetically pleasing features and packaging should seem
more innovative (unfortunately).
For the experiment, a team of designers will come up with a set of highly innovative
product ideas and a set of common, less innovative product ideas. The level of
innovation will be “measured” by polling a group of designers with the ideas in
written form and having them rank the innovativeness (or score?). A set of 4
industrial designers and artists each will make sketches of the 4 high and 4 low
innovative concepts. A set of 4 less skilled artists including elementary school
children will be asked to draw the same concepts. These concepts should be ideas
that can be conveyed with a simple drawing and pertain to themes that most people
can relate to. Each drawing of the same concept would have the same text captions
in any.
Participants in the study will be shown two drawings at a time of the same concept,
one from an industrial designer and one from a less skilled artist. They will be told
that they are ranking innovative ideas within the same theme. They will be asked
to say which concept for the given theme is more innovative. Ideally, both
drawings should present the same concept just with different levels of drawing
ability. Participants may catch on that all the idea pairs are the same with just
different drawings and so we may want to have the subjects look through a packet
of drawings of different ideas and have them rank order the innovativeness.
In this method, there would be 8 packet options each containing the same 8
concepts in different forms each drawn by a different person. Each packet should
contain two well-drawn highly innovative (WDHI), two poorly drawn highly
innovative (PDHI), two well drawn low innovative (WDLI), and two poorly drawn
low innovative (PDLI).
In a separate but related study, we could have a panel review the drawings from the
brainstorm test above and rate them only on quality of sketch. We could compare
this to previous quantity, novelty and usefulness ratings for each participant.
___________