While people approach creative actions in diverse ways, navigating them effectively requires self-regulatory effort. In this preregistered experiment, we examined whether simple self-regulation prompts, provided across the stages of the creative process, make the outcomes more creative. Participants (N = 332) engaged in one of three creativity…

This study delved into the structuring of design briefs and investigated the impact of employing visual analogies compared to text analogies. We aimed to contribute to the growing body of research investigating the role of analogies in design problem-solving. To do this, we conducted a controlled experiment at a university with 135 undergraduate…

This study examines "specific" exploration activities in students' visual arts portfolios from secondary education. Creating original visual arts products requires exploration according to Getzels and Csiksentmihalyi ("The creative vision. A longitudinal study of problem finding in Art." New York: John Wiley & Sons Inc.,…

The tendency to conform to prior examples can be viewed as a form of mental fixation that has negative consequences and limits the scope and quality of designs. Two experiments using the Smith, S. M., Ward, T. B., & Schumacher, J. S. [(1993) "Memory & Cognition," 21, 837-845] toy invention task were conducted to determine whether…

The principles and techniques of design education have begun to influence art education in the United States, but their effect so far has been modest, primarily because of a gaping divide in beliefs about creativity and how to stimulate it. With K-12 art education on the chopping block of a culture awash with budget cuts and testing fever, this is…

Creativity in teaching is a significant and complex construct. However, in the local educational context, creativity in teaching has received little attention. This study aimed to investigate the validity, practicality, and benefits of applying a modified consensual assessment technique (CAT) to assess creativity in teaching design. Four hundred…

This paper reports on an interview study with MFA students in two different full-time MFA degree programs in painting. The interviews were conducted as part of two ethnographic studies, each one academic year in length, of art and design schools at two U.S. universities. The goal was to explore the extended process whereby MFA student artists, in…

T. B. Ward (1994) investigated creativity by asking participants to draw alien creatures that they imagined to be from a planet very different from Earth. He found that participant drawings reliably contained features typical of common Earth animals. As a consequence, Ward concluded that creativity is structured. The present investigation predicts…

Designers try to "enlist" whatever they can to help themselves arrive at high quality, novel and original designs. When stimuli are used for this purpose, usually provided at the onset of the design process, these stimuli, or sources, may have one of two effects: they may enhance the design search and contribute to a high-quality, creative design,…

During creative problem-solving, designers frequently come across a variety of rich visual displays. While browsing for different sources of information, pictorial representations of existing concepts take prominence. However, once designers start generating new solution ideas to design problems, they often become too attached to some of the…

Many studies of design fixation ask designers to work in controlled laboratory or classroom environments, but innovative design work frequently occurs in dynamic, social environments. The two studies reviewed in this paper investigated how three independent variables likely to be present in many design environments affect design fixation. The…

This paper outlines a research program that seeks to develop strategies for facilitating creative development through paradigmatic transformation. The Mobius Ring is used as a metaphor for intuition and intellect cyclically feeding each other, and a continuum of modes of thought evolving from "Becoming" to "Being" is outlined. These strategies can…

This article describes a six-week course for design students called "Needs Awareness and Design" which stresses the development of creative thinking skills. Brainstorming is recommended for identifying many ideas, and synectics is stressed for actual problem solving. (DB)