Designing Rewards for Rewarding Designs: Demonstrating the Impact of Rewards on the Creative Design Process

Abstract: The creative design process involves transforming abstract goals into concrete outcomes through a series of decisions made under constraints. While such processes are commonly shaped by feedback like rewards, their impact on design decision making remains unclear. To better understand the role of rewards in the design process, we modeled a 3D parametric, goal-based chair design task as a Markov Decision Process. We tracked participants' decisions as they iteratively developed designs for an abstract design goal, and presented either a goal-aligned or goal-agnostic reward at every step. We tested the effect of these rewards on task behaviour and self-reported experience. With rewards, participants more thoroughly explored the design space, and maximised goal-aligned over goal-agnostic rewards while preserving diversity across designs. The nature of the goal also mattered, influencing participants' perception of the reward's usefulness. Building on these insights, we propose guidelines for designing effective feedback for design decision making.