Enhancing creativity by using Idea-Wheel and its validation

Abstract

In IIT Guwahati, the students who join the Master of Design program come from four different backgrounds, these are Technical background, Architecture Background, Fine Arts Background and Design and Fashion Design Background. The students of such diverse background react/think differently while solving a design problem. The students try to find a solution to a problem which is generally ill-defined, cannot be resolved by them and this leads them to follow a problem-focusing strategy. Empirical data on such design processes were obtained from a set of protocol studies of 27 Design Students with heterogeneous background, whose designs were evaluated on the basis of overall quality and taking into consideration variety of aspects including creativity. From the generated data, we identify aspects of creativity in design related to the formulation of the design problem and to the concept of originality. We have also introduced a tool “Idea Wheel” to the same set of students, faced with the same design problem, left for them to solve. We then reassess the creativity aspect. It is then observed as to how an ill-defined problem can be resolved and how a problem-focusing strategy changes to a solution-focusing strategy among the students. In addition to this, the paper will highlight the validation part by conducting the identical experiment on another set of students with heterogeneous background.