Using design notebooks to map creativity during team activities

Previously, the authors investigated the use of design notebooks as indicators of student participation in team activities. It was demonstrated that design notebooks are a good indicator of teamwork practices. The motivation of this study is to enhance creativity in capstone design. In order to effectively enhance creativity, tools have to be developed to map it. Here an attempt was made to differentiate team creativity from individual creativity. Individual creativity here relates to the process of generating ideas on the basis of learning types and brainstorming techniques. Team creativity relates to the additional creativity, which is generated through synergy and team dynamics. For the design notebooks, a coding rubric is presented that is used describe and quantify the creativity instances that occur in the course of a design process. The study involved senior undergraduate students, in a two-semester capstone course. The results presented in this paper reveal that design notebooks can be used as an effective tool to map creativity instances during team activities. It was also shown that the creativity instances for the students occur at different points along the design process compared to expert designer. A discussion on how to shift the occurrences of the instances of creativity in the capstone design process is presented.