Divergent thinking techniques discrepancy and functional creativity: Comparative study of structural and procedural techniques in architectural design

• Main Author: Doaa K. Hassan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2018-12-01
• Series: Ain Shams Engineering Journal
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2090447916301447

Architectural design ‘process’ is a creative process, since “to design” means “to create”. In this respect, it is significant to highlight the role of divergent thinking in creativity. Divergent thinking tackles problems from multiple perspectives and often discovers and develops original solutions. Thus, this research aimed at investigating the difference between two divergent thinking techniques as representatives of two different approaches, the ‘structural’ and the ‘procedural’. The study methodology depended on a comparative study in terms of an educational experiment to examine the discrepancy between Lotus Blossom (structural) and Provocation (procedural). Design project as a data gathering tool was required to inspect ‘product’ functional creativity and a qualitative questionnaire was conducted in order to evaluate the interface mechanism of each technique. The study ended up with specific findings that showed the pros and cons of each technique, based on ‘descriptive statistics’. Keywords: Creative design process, Divergent thinking techniques, Lotus blossom, Provocation