Creativity in Systems Design: the Bath Interactive Ideas Factory

The object of undertaking multidisiplinary research is to bring numerous skills and experiences to focus on common problems. Unfortunately in Universities these skills and experiences are currently compartmentalised in single discipline academic departments. The value to be gained by being able to demonstrate multidiscipline research is very clear to all although doing it effectively is very difficult. This proposal aims to adopt novel approaches to facilitate the engagement of academics from different departments in the complex area of system design. We aim to achieve our aims and objectives in this area through the following activities: 1. laying the foundations for an interdisciplinary research culture in Engineering and Computer Science,2. bringing together groups of researchers with common interests from each department to focus upon specific topics,3.facilitating cross-disciplinary research capability of these groups to an international level,4. developing novel interdisciplinary research approaches to system design problems,5. evolving 4 into large-scale research projects and teams