An Empirical Study of the Creativity, Imagination, and Design Thinking of Taiwanese Design Undergraduates

Abstract

Design thinking has been valued in business and education field. Design thinking uses creative approaches to problem solving, organizational development, and learning. For designers, the ultimate goal is to produce user-friendly and economic products that meet people’s needs and desires. In order to achieve that goal, creativity, imagination, and design thinking have become necessary capacities for designers to transform abstract ideas into useful products and services successfully. The purpose of the current study was to examine the relationship among creativity, imagination, and design thinking of Chinese design undergraduates. Two research questions are asked: What is the relationship among creativity, imagination, and design thinking of our participants? Do gender and age affect these relationships? Based on structural equation modeling, we found that the relationships among creativity, imagination, and design thinking were strong and positive. Additionally, age and gender did not affect in these relationships. Although some limitations were discussed in the current study, the results provide unique value for future research.

Keywords:Challenge creativity, imagination, design thinking, structural equation modeling, Taiwanese undergraduates

DOI: 10.7176/JEP/12-20-01

Publication date:July 31^st 2021