Do Creativity Metrics from Design Research Correlate with Those from Psychology?

Abstract

In this paper, we explore measurements of design creativity through metrics related to the processes used in designing and relate them to the metrics used in psychology for idea creativity, ie, novelty and fluency. Our goal was to test the reliability of psychometric measures of creativity to assess creativity in team design. We studied 19 teams of 3 professional engineers that engaged in a one hour-long design task. Design tasks have a greater ecological validity than single repetitive tasks like the AUT and the RAT. Engaging in a design task involves a wide range of cognitive activities, which contribute to creative ideation and to expanding the design space. This study focused on the relationship between the teams’ design idea creativity and design behaviors during the task. We explored to what extent design collaboration between teammates, design evaluation and the co-evolution of the problem-solution space relate to the psychometric measures of idea creativity. Results suggest no specific trend in the correlation between collaboration and idea creativity as measured by the metrics used in psychology, while more cognitive focus on problem-solution co-evolution negatively correlates with these measures of idea creativity. The paper concludes with potential explanations for this lack of correlation.