Design Training and Creativity: Students Develop Stronger Divergent but Not Convergent Thinking.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Design Studies

Background:

• Creativity training often prioritizes divergent thinking (idea generation) over convergent thinking (idea evaluation).
• The impact of design training on both facets of creativity remains incompletely understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the effects of design training on divergent and convergent thinking skills.
• To compare creativity skills across senior design students, junior design students, and non-design majors.

Main Methods:

• Employed a between-subjects design with 120 university students (senior design, junior design, non-design majors).
• Utilized the Alternate Uses Task for divergent thinking, Remote Associates Task for convergent thinking, and Raven's Progressive Matrices Test for abstract reasoning.
• Conducted one-way ANOVAs to analyze performance differences between groups.

Main Results:

• Senior design students significantly outperformed other groups in divergent thinking.
• Contrary to hypotheses, senior design students scored lower in convergent thinking than non-design majors.
• No significant group differences were found in nonverbal abstract reasoning.

Conclusions:

• Design training demonstrably enhances divergent thinking abilities.
• Design training may potentially hinder convergent thinking skills, suggesting a need for balanced curriculum development.
• Findings have implications for refining design education curricula to foster comprehensive creativity.