Affiliations: School of Foreign Languages, Hubei University for Nationalities, Enshi, China | Electrical and Computer Engineering, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada | Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
Abstract: A comparison between humour and creative design is presented in
this paper. First, we will show that humour comprehension process and creative
design are twins because they share similar mechanisms. Both processes start
with a "story" and ends with concepts that are surprising. Reader expectations
and user requirements are both updated along the process. To demonstrate the
similarity between the two processes, examples of humour comprehension and
design processes were analysed. Second, we will show that humour and creative
design are partners in a sense that they can influence each other. Humour is
influenced by creative design process because humour production implies a
creative design process in which designer has to creatively come up with a text
that incorporates two irrelevant or even opposite scripts to produce humour
effects. Creative design can be enhanced by humorous conditions as some
research has found. An interpretation of these phenomena is also presented
based on a theoretical model of design creativity.
