Creative Mindset in Design Education (Full Research)
- Clara Choi
- Apr 19
- 5 min read
Updated: Apr 20
Creativity is an important problem-solving tool in the design context. People who are in design education treat creativity as an important component of their self-identity. Thus, it is imperative to develop and be mindful of creativity in design education. Most traditional design fields focus on creative outcomes that impact revenue, trends, and popularity. However, this current research shows that it is even more important to focus on people’s state of mind (mindsets) and attitude in building their creative ability. Depending on people’s attitudes toward their projects, some design solutions are more creative than others.
This research originated from two different types of attitudes and their subsequent outcomes involving students’ mindsets in regard to the decision to be creative in an educational context. The decision to be creative is related to people’s beliefs regarding their psychological traits and abilities, which plays an important role in influencing their own motivation and behavior (Dweck, 1999). According to Dweck’s conceptualization, people hold different beliefs that represent their state of mind and explain their subsequent behavior. Some people perceive their abilities as fixed (fixed mindset: unable to change), while others believe that their abilities are malleable (growth mindset: able to change) (Dweck & Leggett, 1988). This research takes the perspective that the creative mindset is related to a growth mindset toward creativity.
The primary research objective of this study is to identify the presence of design students’ creative mindset and how it is manifested in their work. This research also seeks to discover how the creative mindset operates and develops with respect to students’ creative performance by incorporating the concept of the fixed/growth mindset toward creativity. In order to address these purposes, grounded theory was used with a qualitative triangulation. For a good sample selection, the growth mindset concept was applied to define high creative growth mindset students.
Throughout semester-long observations and interviews with these high growth mindset students selected from the existing implicit belief survey, the qualitative data established the fact that: 1) The creative mindset involves students’ attitude toward design projects and is manifested as a positive attitude, such as having an open mind and demonstrating readiness at the beginning of their design process; 2) A positive attitude from students’ creative mindset is closely related to learning goals, which is one of the main concepts of the growth mindset; 3) The creative mindset greatly affects the outcome of the design, and more specifically improves one’s design ability, which contributes to student success from a long-term perspective; and 4) The creative mindset can be developed/enhanced through learning. The major findings of this study provide a number of important implications for improving pedagogical strategy, utilizing the concept of the growth mindset within a design education context. Moreover, this study provides directions for future research regarding the creative mindset in design education and suggestions for expanding this study to contribute to other disciplines.
Design and Creativity
“…Design as a problem-solving activity can never, by definition, yield the one
right answer: it will always produce an infinite number of answers…” (Papanek, 1971, p.
5). This quotation aptly illustrates how design has been adopted as a creative tool for
solving problems. Given that our society is becoming more complex, and people are
undeniably facing a wider array of problems, design processes are considered to be an
important tool for tackling complex social and cultural problems. Designers use design
thinking, which provides us with a new way of tackling problems and encourages us to
adopt divergent approaches and new solutions (Brown, 2009).
Currently, design is perceived as a crucial means of fostering creativity and
innovation when employed as a problem-solving tool, insomuch as the solutions should
not be banal or useless; rather, they should be novel and useful. Thus, design is a field that
inherently involves a creative problem-solving activity and necessitates making decisions
to fulfill certain objectives. From the definitions and conceptions of design, it is important
to understand how creativity operates in the design process. Designers’ ideas develop as
their problem-solving progresses. Therefore, each designer constructs his or her own
representation of the design problem, dealing with a problem that becomes specific to him
or her (Simon, 1995). In practice, different designers, supposedly solving the same design
problem, reach different solutions (Bonnardel & Marmeche, 2005). In this process, some
design solutions are more creative, while others are considered as less creative.
Design educators often see a similar process in the area of design education.
Although students may have the same design project, they approach it with different design
solutions. These various design solutions produce different processes and outcomes: some
designs are more innovative, while others are less so. There are many reasons why students
perform differently in their creative design processes. However, through my own
experience and observation, there is a common reason – their attitudes – that explains how
they approach design projects. However, their thinking habits precede their attitude
formation. With respect to my own thinking habits, every single time a new project proposal
was put in front of me, I would ask myself, how am I going to come up with something new
and innovative, and something exciting that challenges what is already out there? In short,
I asked myself how I was going to get excited about this new project. This is my usual
mindset before starting a new design project. I have been involved in the educational
environment for a long time as a design student, and later, as an instructor for design
courses. I always look for a better creative design process (and product) from my students’
design work.
In this context, I often see that some students are excited about their new design
project, while other students tend to exhibit helplessness toward the new project: they differ
in both their design processes and grades. The students who are excited about their new
design project usually exhibit curiosity about the new assignment and are willing to design
something new and innovative. Other students who perceive the new project as a
bothersome, difficult chore usually see the new assignment as challenging, and they try to
find easy ways to finish it. In essence, they display different attitudes when they are
assigned a new design project.
This research originated from my interest regarding these two different attitudes
and their subsequent outcomes. Why then do students act differently? Where do these
attitudes come from? Do they adopt a certain mindset in terms of their new design project,
like I do? If so, do these mindsets toward a design project affect their creativity? How do
these mindsets influence students’ creativity? The design area in higher education requires
a high level of creativity for problem solving throughout the design process. Each design
outcome tends to be unique and non-repetitive in its conception and development. People
who are in design education treat creativity as an important component of their self-identity.
If students’ creativity can be affected by their mindsets, then investigating students’
mindsets should be a first priority with respect to how they work differently. Thus, the
research purpose is to investigate design students’ mindset toward creativity in order to
discover how the mindset influences their attitude and affects their performance.
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