Mapping of creativity in capstone design process

Bringing a concept into reality is intriguing to any novice designers in academia. The development of a concept is created by novel thought, known as creativity. The application of creativity has been viewed as a substantial foundation to innovative design development. The motivation of this research is to enhance creativity in senior capstone design projects and discover a method to map creativity in capstone design process. To effectively enhance creativity, tools have to be developed to map it. Recently, the application of design notebooks have been used to determine the incubation of creativity through student participation in capstone design projects. As a result, design documentation is a good indicator of teamwork practices through group interaction and creative development. This research is proposed to determine the context of creativity through the creative elements, context of the individuals involved, inhibitions of creative progress, and the sustainable methods to foster creativity. This research included two student teams working on two different capstone design projects over the course of two semesters. The following team outcomes were used in this study namely, i) design notebooks, ii) project reports, iii) project presentations, and iv) the final artifact. To assess the creative context of the documentation, specific coding rubrics were applied to the design notebooks, proposals, and presentations to describe and quantify the creative instances that occurred in the course of the design process, and interpreted into the creative process. The influence and inhibitions of creativity were then reviewed upon completion of each respected capstone project and determine the creative thought and motivation to converge to innovative solutions. A team of professional designers analyzed the team reports and the final artifact through the use of questionnaires applied to the student research. As a result, the context to enhance creativity in capstone design is the capstone design team and is motivated extrinsically during the creative activities of divergence and incubation. The team applies the creative activities most effectively during the production phase of the capstone design process, which supported the need for a cohesive creative process to be implemented during capstone design activities.