66. Teaching Creativity as a Fundamental Design Practice

Creativity is fundamental to daily human life and finds wide range of applications in various professions such as arts, graphics, user experiences, design, architecture, education, marketing and so on. It generates curiosity, helps us dive deep within ourselves, challenges our thinking, helps connect reflections with actions, builds cross cultural connections, enables empathy and unblocks conventional thinking patterns. Present research enquires 10 design educators on their methods of teaching creativity practices to design students in their foundation and later years to nurture creative talents through a structured questionnaire-based study. Educators shared few methods used such as ice-breaking, creative introduction, line modification, spin-a-yarn, combining words, kick cards, tangrams, questioning assumptions, storytelling apart from commonly used brainstorming, mind mapping and SCAMPER techniques to teach creativity to students. Further, 30 students participated in the creativity stimulation sessions and were given a set of five assignments on creativity. 90% respondents agreed that the assignments were fun-filled, exciting, engaging, easy to complete, stimulating and important. Only 12% felt it was difficult and exhausting. It was observed that creativity encourages questioning and gives individual expression a voice by stimulating and motivating thought processes.