Yes of course they are, they have to be creative to imagine solutions to problems. Do they know how to creatively design a product? No I don’t think they do…
Now, please don’t get upset, Engineers come up with fantastic ideas, and the goods ones are very creative people. Perhaps if you want to generalise, designers are a bit more artistic, engineers are better at maths, but the really important difference is in training. Where engineers learn analysis tools to solve problems, designers learn how to use creativity to solve problems.
I remember various debates on creativity in an engineering and CAD forum, where Engineers have hotly argued that the felt tip fairies are all just coming up with daft ideas, whereas the engineers can be just as creative AND practical too. I’m lucky to have a foot in both camps, trained as an engineer and working as a designer. From this perspective I’d have to say that the engineers in these debates are wrong.
I learned the basic design process at age 14 in design technology at school. Yet I was surprised that during the whole three years being taught engineering at University, the words sketching, ideas, creativity or the design process were never mentioned. We learnt a lot of tools for mathematically modelling fluid flow or calculating the resistance and propulsion of ships, but we never sat down and freely sketched out 20 possible solutions to a problem. I often see the results of this in the output of lots of manufacturing companies, you’ll often see fantastically well engineered detail in some aspect of the product, where overall it fails to satisfy.
Freedom is the basic tenet of creativity, it’s giving yourself the freedom and challenge to come up with as many silly ideas as you can. Mathematical tools are great for analysing existing detail, but the best tool for creating the new is the subconscious. And all the fuel the subconscious needs is a clear goal and a bit of encouragement to go for it, making sure that you have a way to explore and capture options. It’s a bit like panning for gold, you don’t want to poke around around under one rock, you want to dig up the whole river. Then the analysis comes afterwards picking out the best nuggets that fulfil the brief.
Of course the designers toolbox includes variations on this basic process, and different ways to prompt and capture ideas, but that’s basically it. And I strongly believe it would do us all a lot of good if all engineering courses included these same tools.
I also happen to think designers could do with learning some more basic engineering analysis and mathematical problem solving, but then I’m a a bit weird like that.
