Design Creativity 2010 part 12. What is ‘design creativity’? It is impossible to answer this question without considering why human beings can – and do – ‘design’. Design creativity is instrumental in not only addressing social problems faced across the world, but also evoking an innate appreciation for beauty and a sense of personal contentment. | Interrelations between Motivation Creativity and Emotions in Design Thinking Processes 99 Experimental research has shown that regulatory focus affects creativity. Creativity can be defined as the ability to produce work that is both novel . original unexpected and appropriate . useful adaptive concerning task constraints Sternberg and Lubart 1999 p. 3 . Creativity is not only a personality trait it is also affected by situational factors such as task characteristics or expected gratifications or motivational variables Förster Friedman and Liberman 2004 . Crowe and Higgins 1997 asked their study participants to complete different tasks which tested among other things the capability to generate creative insights. Participants in the promotion focus condition found significantly more solutions compared to those in the prevention focus condition. These findings were supported by Friedman and Förster 2001 . Furthermore Crowe and Higgins 1997 studies also demonstrated that the promotion focus is conducive to a risky explorative processing style that facilitates insight-related processes they also found interdependence between the promotion focus and cognitive flexibility. The prevention focus however was stronger related to analytical problem solving and attentive behavior. This research shows that to further our understanding of creative work regulatory focus is a motivational variable worthwhile studying. Since regulatory focus seems to predict creative performance we now want to understand what situational factors can enhance the one or the other focus. Hypotheses . Motivation and Creativity in the Design Thinking Process In our first set of hypotheses we ask how motivation focusing on regulatory focus is affected by the different phases of the design thinking process. We propose that the diverse phases of a design thinking process influence the momentary regulatory focus differently which would therefore explain situational changes in motivation. We .
