Assessing Design Creativity (01-06-10)

Designers do a relatively good job of assessing some aspects of their own creativity.  These accurately assessed areas are the fluency, flexibility, and overall creativity of their design efforts.  Designers do not fare as well when evaluating the following 9 aspects of their creativity:  elaboration, clarity of function of each component in the design, efficiency of functioning of the design, availability of all the drawing plans according to the presented sections, operability of the design in reality, innovation, fulfilling specific design requirements, inclusion of functions beyond those required, and mastery skills concerning the aesthetics of the design representation.  Researchers defined fluency as “freedom in generating ideas, examining solutions, and using ideas” while flexibility related to “checking different possibilities, viewpoints, contrary approaches.”  Overall creativity was evaluated on a scale ranging from “highly creative” to “not at all creative.”

Shulamith Kreitler, and Hernan Casakin, 2009.  “Self-Perceived Creativity:  The Perspective of Design.”  European Journal of Psychological Assessment, vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 194-203.