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Creativity in Interior Design: Cross-Cultural Practitioners' Reviews of Entry-Level Portfolios

Siriporn Kobnithikulwong

Global Attention to Creativity

We live in “a world of change” and increasingly find that what we normally do may not work anymore. In this situation, creativity becomes essential for us to achieve our goals as individuals, as organizations, and as countries (Glăveanu 2010). Creativity has become one of the key qualities for people and products to be successful, especially these days when many countries have encountered difficulties such as natural disasters and economic recessions.

Organizations and governments across the world fully promote creative ideas and processes to enhance the productivity of their services, businesses, and national economies (Baldoni 2010; Oliver and Jung 2010). Since 2005, the United Kingdom has developed a strategy called “creative economy” to address the global competitive challenge by encouraging creativity in businesses. To compete in the current worldwide marketplace, others, such as the United States, Australia, Ireland, South Korea, and Thailand, have tried hard to develop initiatives to harness creativity (Development of Creative Economy in Different Countries, 2009; Lee 2012; Percival 2012).

Creativity in Design

Design commonly represents a creative profession, involving designers who are capable of creating innovative design works (Lawson 2006). In design disciplines, creativity appears fundamental not only in business but also in education. In looking at design education, we often find creativity as one of the most important aspects in curricula. In the practice sector, the role of design has become recognized as a creative industry that plays a significant part in many countries' economic capability (Hokanson 2010). As a result, research on design creativity has been increasingly called for to provide a better understanding of creativeness in design. According to Mooney, creativity is a multi-faceted phenomenon found in products, processes, persons, and environments (Mooney 1963). Researchers across disciplines have examined the phenomenon in relation to these four aspects; however, researchers in design fields have paid the most attention to creative design processes or products (e.g., Christiaans 2002; Demirkan and Hasirci 2009; Goldschmidt and Smolkov 2006).

Problem Statement

There is no doubt that design disciplines worldwide recognize creativity; however, characteristics of design creativity are still vague. People often consider design as a combination of the arts and sciences (Buchanan 1992). Design shares similarities with the other disciplines; nonetheless, Cross argues, “design practice does indeed have its own strong and appropriate intellectual culture” (Cross 2001). To indicate specific attributes of creativity in the design domain, we need to address crucial questions regarding design creativity that have not been fully answered. The most imperative of these are: How is creativity defined in design disciplines? How do experts in design disciplines assess creativity? and What do these stakeholders perceive as the most important attributes of creativity?

Another gap in knowledge on creativity is the cultural context. Since the majority of creativity research has been conducted in the West and represent Western points of view, this knowledge may not apply to other areas of the world (Baer and Kaufman 2006; Kim 2007). Although the number of cross-cultural studies has been increasing in the current literature (e.g., Chen, Kasof, Himsel, et al. 2005; Kim 2005; Leung, Au, and Leung 2004; Paletz and Peng 2008), the scope of research contexts clearly needs further expansion. Focusing on the design domain, a review of articles published in top-tier design journals including Journal of Interior Design, Design Issues, and Design Studies showed few cross-cultural studies conducted so far. As Westwood and Low state, “[c]ultures are creative and innovative within the context of their own systems and to the extent that circumstances require creative and innovative solutions” (Westwood and Low 2003). Thus, to fully gain insight into creativity, we need to examine cultural impacts on the phenomenon.

Based on the issues outlined above, this essay presents research that attempts to explore creativity in interior design across two cultures, Thailand and the US, with an emphasis on the assessment, attributes, and definitions of creativity. As argued by Mooney, creativity involves a product, process, person, and/or environment (Mooney 1963) and creative individuals utilize creative processes to produce creative products, all of which are enhanced by creative environments. Moreover, other researchers, such as Simonton (1990) and Mumford, Scott, Gaddis, and Strange (2002), have proposed an additional aspect, persuasion, to emphasize the ability to convince others about one's creative talent. In regard to the notion that the design product is the evidence of a designer's creativity and the outcome of a creative design process (Demirkan and Hasirci 2009), the research presented in this essay emphasizes only the creative product.

Relevant Studies on Creative Design Products

A review of precedent reveals that little systematic research on creative products has been conducted in allied design fields (Cho 2007; Christiaans 2002). However, a few existing studies on the evaluation of design products are worth thoroughly reviewing. Levins examined interior designers' assessments of entry-level interior design portfolios by assessing creativity in terms of novelty, resolution, and style (Levins 2006). She also added overall creativity and hiring potential to link the portfolio evaluation to its actual role in the hiring process. Levins employed survey and interview methods and the results revealed that overall creativity had the strongest relationship to novelty. Interestingly, a creative portfolio had a significant influence on an applicant's potential to be hired.

Barnard also explored qualities relating to creativity by adapting Amabile's criteria to assess creativity, technical skills, and aesthetic aspects of interior design projects (Amabile 1983; Barnard 1992). She asked design educators and practitioners to rate the projects. The findings showed that while educators and designers gauged overall creativity similarly, they viewed creative attributes differently. Educators associated creativity with artistic and aesthetic merits while designers, conversely, valued the technical and functional qualities of creativity.

Examining creativity in artworks across cultures, Niu and Sternberg recruited a sample of US and Chinese judges to evaluate artworks created by US and Chinese college students based on creativity, likeability, appropriateness, and technical quality (Niu and Sternberg 2001). Creativity had the strongest correlation to likeability, which is one of the aesthetic qualities in the artworks. There was no indication that the judges made more favorable ratings for one culture over another. However, Chinese judges showed higher consensus on their judgments than their counterparts and US judges seemed to have a higher standard than Chinese judges when evaluating creativity, likeability, and technical quality. Similarly, Chen, Kasof, Himsel, et al. asked US and Chinese judges to assess drawings created by US and Chinese undergraduate students on creativity, uniqueness, technical quality, and liking (Chen et al. 2002). They found that all aspects were highly correlated, and the relationships were similar across groups.

Introduction to the Study

To assess the creative design product, the current research employs Amabile's Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT), which has been applied widely in diverse disciplines, such as psychology, business, art, and design (Amabile 1982, 1996; Dollinger and Shafran 2005; Kaufman, Plucker, and Baer 2008). The CAT requires experts to judge levels of creativity from their own concepts of creativeness; this basically reflects real-world judgments of creative works based on the notion that the consensus of experts in a given domain results in the best creativity measure (Kaufman, Lee, Baer, and Lee 2007). The role of experts also appears to be significant in Csikszentmihalyi's systems theory of creativity, which comprises three factors: the individual, the domain, and the field (Csikszentmihalyi 1988). Experts take part in the field, influencing and assessing the individual's creative outcomes in the domain. Consequently, in this study experienced Thai and US designers were recruited as the experts to evaluate creative design products.

To suitably employ the CAT as an assessment method, an assessed product must meet the following criteria: it must be appropriate to be evaluated; it must allow for flexibility and novelty in responses; and it should not represent participants' different skill levels in baseline performances (Amabile 1996). This study utilizes a sample of entry-level design portfolios as the assessed product, since it meets all of the three requirements. The portfolio also represents a passport, enabling students who are graduating from design schools to cross from the educational to the professional world. Therefore, employing a set of portfolios as the assessed product in this research should help to reveal evaluation criteria in the actual hiring process. For the purposes of this study, the domain consists of the interior design discipline and culture, which offers knowledge and skill sets that shape perceptions of the individual and field, which are represented by Thai interior design graduates and Thai and US senior-level designers, respectively. The students created a sample of entry-level design portfolios as creative outcomes to be assessed by the practitioners.

The primary purpose of this study was to conduct a cross-cultural investigation into creativity in the context of interior design. Another objective was to explore Thai and US designers' assessments of design portfolios. Last but not least, this research aims to help define creativity and its attributes in interior design. To scrutinize the assessment, dimensions, and definitions of creativity across cultures, this study employed a sample of Thai and US experienced designers to assess creativity levels in a sample of Thai entry-level interior design portfolios.

In order to thoroughly examine similarities and differences between Thai and US practitioners' assessments and perceptions of creativity, the research questions aimed to: (1) examine designers' assessments of overall creativity, hiring potential, and the creative attributes: novelty, appropriateness, technical merit, and aesthetic appeal; (2) compare Thai and US practitioners' judgments of the portfolios to indicate cultural similarities and/or variations; and (3) qualitatively explore portfolio assessments, hiring considerations, and definitions of creativity supplied by Thai and US designers.

Methodology

This study employed field-based research and utilized a systematic methodology to thoroughly examine creativity in the context of interior design. Survey and semi-structured interview methods were combined into a portfolio assessment procedure. The methodology for evaluating entry-level design portfolios drew on the CAT involving the agreement of senior-level designers as expert judges who independently assessed the sample of design portfolios. After the portfolio assessment, a semi-structured interview was conducted with each designer to gain the qualitative insight into the evaluation process. Additionally, a field-based research approach required the researcher to collect data from participants in an actual setting. Such an approach provided a better understanding of the issues under observation and enhances the generalizability of findings to real-world situations (Bogdan and Biklen 1998).

Portfolios as the Assessed Product

Figure 16.1 illustrates the overall methodology employed in this study. The first step was to develop a set of portfolios to evaluate. Six pilot judges with experience in practicing and reviewing portfolios in interior design reviewed 23 digital portfolios received from Thammasat University, Thailand, and selected 12 portfolios as a sample to assess. The chosen portfolios were sorted into groups exhibiting high (n = 4), medium (n = 4), and low creativity (n = 4). Each of the portfolios contained similar projects, including a corporate and hospitality project, a product design work, as well as an individualized thesis project. Twelve student portfolios were presented to judges in a timed Microsoft PowerPoint format show. The researcher developed three randomized sets of the slide shows to reduce sequential order effects and potential viewing fatigue.

Figure 16.1

Experienced Designers as the Expert Judges

The next step was to recruit appropriate expert judges. The panel consisted of a total of 36 designer participants from 17 design firms selected based on specific criteria: location, services, and professional stature. The researcher chose Bangkok and Atlanta as the research settings because of their compatible characteristics. Bangkok is Thailand's capital and most populous city, locating the economic center and housing national major businesses including a comprehensive design district (“The Largest Cities” 2007). Atlanta is the capital city in the state of Georgia and one of the fastest-growing urban areas in the US, and offers a competitive design market in the southern region (Apple 2000).

Both cities have similar design cultures that focus on international design styles in medium-sized urban areas. Twenty Thai participants were recruited from nine Bangkok-based firms, while the 16 US participants were recruited from eight Atlanta-based firms. The scope of services in the selected firms was similar and included corporate, hospitality, residential, retail, education, healthcare, government, mixed-use design, cultural, and transit design. Importantly, all of the firms had received national and/or international design awards and had projects featured in national and/or international trade publications.

The Data-Collecting Process

The researcher scheduled a one-hour block with each practitioner for assessing the sample of portfolios. The data collection involved three stages. First, designer judges watched a four-minute slide show to get an overview of the portfolios. The overview offered the judges a glimpse into the overall quality of the portfolios before they evaluated each one independently. The judges viewed the slide show on a lap top computer with a 14″ screen. The slide presentation illustrated eight images from each portfolio, and slides advanced automatically after two seconds.

In the second stage, the judges viewed the timed slide show and independently evaluated each portfolio using a locally developed assessment instrument designed to assess novelty, appropriateness, technical merit, aesthetic appeal, overall creativity, and hiring potential. These six criteria were developed based on a review of relevant studies on the judgment of creative products in the art and design fields.

As shown in Figure 16.2, concepts of novelty, appropriateness, technical merit, and aesthetic appeal often appear as relevant aspects of creative products. In addition to the four creative dimensions, this study also considered overall creativity and hiring potential, representing the possibility that a student would have an interview for employment, in the assessment criteria to connect the accomplishment of a portfolio to its primary purpose.

Figure 16.2

A seven-point Likert scale, from 1 (poor) to 7 (excellent), was used to assess each portfolio based on the assessment criteria. The portfolios were formatted into a single presentation containing 184 portfolio slides. Each slide was set up to advance automatically to the next slide after 10 seconds. Following each portfolio, a slide instructing the judges to evaluate the previously viewed portfolio was added; this slide was timed to last 15 seconds. The practitioner judges spent approximately 35 minutes in total to complete the assessment.

Upon completion of the second stage, judges participated in semi-structured interviews, providing them with the opportunity to elaborate on the process of reviewing portfolios. To assist the practitioners in recalling their assessment, 12 boards of 14″ x 17″ heavy stock paper featuring eight images from each portfolio were created. This procedure was implemented because the designers could only view each portfolio once during the assessment and this meant that they might not recall which portfolio to reference in the interviews.

Research Findings

Table 16.1 shows the Cronbach's coefficient alphas indicating the inter-judge reliability. According to Amabile, prior to analyzing any data collected by using the CAT, it is necessary to verify whether the judges' subjective evaluations are reliable (Amabile 1996). A high alpha value signifies a high level of agreement among judges. Across all judges, 16 out of 18 coefficients were higher than .70, which is an acceptable value. Only the reliabilities of appropriateness and aesthetic appeal rated by US judges were slightly less than the acceptable level. However, these two aspects also showed greater variation than other criteria in previous studies on assessments of creative products (e.g., Casakin and Kreitler 2008; Runco and Charles 1993). Moreover, studies in social sciences that usually seek experimental findings rather than rigidly precise results tend to accept slightly lower inter-rater reliabilities. Given the exploratory nature of the present study, data points from all six criteria were used in subsequent analyses.

Table 16.1    Inter-judge reliabilities of assessment criteria

Combined Samples' Evaluations of the Assessed Criteria

To examine the combined samples' assessments of overall creativity, hiring potential, and the creative attributes, the researcher first employed a correlation analysis. The analysis revealed positive and significant associations among the six criteria. Overall creativity had a positive and strong correlation to hiring potential (r = .84, p = .000). Concerning the creative dimensions, overall creativity had the strongest association with novelty (r = .85), while having the weakest, but still significant, correlation to technical merit (r = .71). Hiring potential also had the strongest relationship with novelty (r = .84) and the weakest, but still strong, association with technical merit (r = .72).

According to Field, significant correlations between variables do not permit strong inferences about causality in the data (Field 2005). However, we can analyze correlation coefficients further by squaring them to understand the variance between two variables. As Figure 16.3 illustrates, the r² values between overall creativity and hiring potential suggest creativity accounted for 71% of the variance in hiring potential. This result implies that judges considered overall creativity in design portfolios as a strong predictor of hiring potential.

Figure 16.3

Focusing on the creative dimensions, novelty accounted for 72% of the variability in overall creativity, followed by appropriateness at 67%. Aesthetic appeal and technical merit accounted for 58% and 50% of the variance in overall creativity, respectively. In line with this, novelty accounted for 71% of the variability in hiring potential. Finally, appropriateness, aesthetic appeal, and technical merit accounted for 66%, 61%, and 52% of the variance in hiring potential, respectively.

Since all the correlations were significant, a regression analysis was performed to further examine the attributes that would explain the relative importance of the creative aspects to overall creativity and hiring potential. Table 16.2 shows the influence of novelty, appropriateness, technical merit, and aesthetic appeal on overall creativity. The regression analysis also specified the R² value, which is the coefficient squared for multiple regression, of .79. The results of the regression analysis suggest that the set of variables could explain 79% of the variance in overall creativity.

Table 16.2    Multiple regression analysis of overall creativity

Moreover, the standardized coefficient or beta value for each significant variable was examined to further assess its individual impact. As seen in Figure 16.3, novelty had the highest beta value (.43), followed by appropriateness (.29), aesthetic appeal (.15), and technical merit (.10). These values suggest that novelty had four times more impact on overall creativity than technical merit. Table 16.3 illustrates the impact of novelty, appropriateness, technical merit, and aesthetic appeal on hiring potential. The R² value of .79 suggests that this set of variables could explain 79% of the variability in hiring potential. As shown in Figure 16.3, the beta values suggest that novelty (.40) had 1.5 times more influence on hiring potential than appropriateness (.26), with aesthetic appeal (.22) closely following. Technical merit (.10) had the least influence on hiring potential.

Table 16.3    Multiple regression analysis of hiring potential

Thai and US Designers' Assessments of the Creative Portfolios

To explore how Thai and US designers perceived overall creativity and the creative dimensions in design portfolios, as well as potential to hire graduates who created the portfolios, the researcher scrutinized inter-rater reliabilities of the assessed criteria. Then, correlation analyses and Independent-Samples t tests were employed to determine whether there were associations between the groups' judgments and variations in the assessments, respectively.

An examination of the inter-judge reliability score (.84) confirmed that there was strong agreement between Thai and US designers in terms of their assessments of overall creativity in portfolios (see Table 16.1). The coefficient of .88 indicates that Thai and US designers had high consensus in their perception of hiring potential. Similarly, the reliabilities of novelty, appropriateness, technical merit, and aesthetic appeal confirmed that practitioners from the two cultures agreed on their assessments of the portfolios.

Focusing on overall creativity and hiring potential, the researcher analyzed the correlations between the two groups' ratings using simple scatterplots and corre­lation analyses. The scatterplots, showing each portfolio's average score rated by Thai designers against its average score rated by US designers, revealed positive relationships between evaluations of the groups on overall creativity and hiring potential.

Moreover, a correlation analysis confirmed a significant relationship between the groups' assessments on the two variables (overall creativity: r = .80, p = .000; hiring potential: r = .74, p = .006). By squaring the r values, the results indicated that Thai practitioners' evaluations on overall creativity accounted for 64% of the variability in US practitioners' evaluations; correspondingly, Thai designers' ratings on hiring potential explained 55% of the variance in US designers' ratings.

Table 16.4 presents the means and standard deviations of each criterion by culture. Although the two groups of designers seemed to agree on their judgments of the portfolios, the t tests indicated that Thai professionals gave significantly lower average scores to the portfolios on all criteria than the US designers did: overall creativity, hiring potential , novelty, appropriateness, technical merit, and aesthetic appeal.

Table 16.4    Means and standard deviations of assessment criteria by culture

	Thai practitioners (n = 20)	US practitioners (n = 16)
	M SD	M SD
Overall creativity	4.40 1.30	4.89 1.43
Hiring potential	4.17 1.52	4.79 1.49
Novelty	4.22 1.29	4.84 1.38
Appropriateness	4.23 1.15	4.84 1.23
Technical merit	4.43 1.25	5.09 1.11
Aesthetic appeal	4.36 1.28	4.67 1.43

The researcher further explored whether Thai and US designers perceived creativity expressed in design portfolios as an indicator of potential to hire their creators by separately analyzing Thai and US practitioners' evaluations using correlation analyses. After that, results from the correlation analyses were compared to investigate the similarities and/or variations between the two groups.

Starting with Thai practitioners' assessments, correlation analyses revealed positive and significant relationships among overall creativity, the four creative dimensions, and hiring potential. Overall creativity had a significantly high interaction with hiring potential. Among the four creative attributes, novelty correlated most strongly with hiring potential. Appropriateness appeared almost identical as novelty, with aesthetic appeal closely following, and technical merit at the least.

The researcher further examined the relationships between the variables using multiple regression. Novelty, appropriateness, and aesthetic appeal significantly influenced hiring potential, whereas only technical merit did not. For US designers' assessments, correlation analyses showed that overall creativity and all the four creative attributes had positive and significant relationships with hiring potential.

Overall creativity had a significantly high association with hiring potential. In looking at the creative dimensions, the strongest relationship appeared between novelty and hiring potential, followed by appropriateness, aesthetic appeal, and technical merit, respectively. Further, multiple regression revealed that all of the four dimensions significantly influenced hiring potential.

The results from the two groups showed both similarities and differences across the cultures. In both Thai and US designers' evaluations, overall creativity and the four creative dimensions appeared significantly correlated to hiring potential. Nevertheless, the regression analyses disclosed some differences between the groups. Thai practitioners' assessments showed that novelty, appropriateness, and aesthetic appeal – not technical merit – significantly influenced hiring potential. On the other hand, US practitioners' evaluations revealed that all of the creative attributes significantly influenced hiring potential, with novelty having a noticeably larger impact than the other dimensions.

Thai and US Designers' Interview Responses on the Portfolio Assessment, Hiring Considerations, and Creativity Perceptions

Supplementing the statistical results, three open-ended questions were posed after the portfolio assessment to seek a better understanding of designers' views on creativity, especially in relation to portfolio reviews. Thirty-five of the thirty-six judges attended the interview session. One Thai practitioner could not participate in the interview. The qualitative data collected from the interview were transcribed, interpreted, coded, and classified into main themes.

The first question asked judges to identify the criteria they considered important while assessing the portfolios. The responses were coded and organized into groups in relation to: overall creativity; the creative dimensions novelty, appropriateness, technical merit, aesthetic appeal; and other factors.

Based on a total of 55 responses from the Thai sample, 75% of them related to creativity and its attributes, while the other 25% included other aspects, such as clarity, articulation, and the composition of a portfolio. Excluding these factors, when rating portfolios, Thai practitioners favored creativity (23.64%) as much as aesthetic appeal (21.82%), followed by appropriateness (16.36%), technical merit (9.09%), and novelty (3.64%).

Based on a total of 46 answers from the US sample, 72% referred to creativity and the creative dimensions, and the other 28% mentioned other criteria. Focusing on creativity and its attributes, the US designers recognized creativity first (28.26%), technical merit second (15.22%), followed by appropriateness (13.04%), aesthetic appeal (10.87%), and novelty (4.35%). When reviewing portfolios, Thai designers looked for both creativity and aesthetic appeal almost equally, while US practitioners considered creativity as the foremost aspect. Interestingly, both groups regarded novelty as less important than the other creative criteria.

The second question asked judges to describe criteria they considered in the actual hiring process. With reference to the criteria involved in making a hiring decision, 68.42% of the Thai practitioners (n = 13) agreed that they often suggested an applicant with a creative portfolio for an interview and sometimes even recommended hiring him or her. All of the 16 US designers unanimously agreed on the importance of a creative portfolio in the hiring process. However, practitioners from both cultures noted that, in addition to reviewing the portfolio, they needed to assess the person as well.

In line with this, based on the total of 62 answers from Thai designers, 24.19% cited the portfolio aspects (creativity, technical skills, and aesthetic sense), while 43.55% emphasized the personal characteristics. Thai designers also referred to work capability and communication skills 17.74% and 14.52% of the time, respectively. Similarly, based on the total of 79 responses from US practitioners, 31.65% highlighted the portfolio aspects, while 40.51% referred to the personal characteristics. US practitioners discussed the work capability 18.99% of the time, though only 8.86% of the responses included communication skills.

In summary, Thai and US designers generally viewed creativity in a portfolio as important as an applicant's work capability and his or her personal characteristics when making a hiring decision. Additionally, Thai designers emphasized communication skills more than their US counterparts.

The final question asked judges to discuss their own personal definition of creativity. Their responses were organized in relation to novelty, appropriateness, technical merit, aesthetic appeal, and other considerations. Eighty four percent of the Thai designers' responses cited novelty, appropriateness, technical merit, and aesthetic appeal, while the other 16% referenced other criteria. The majority of the responses (40.54%) described creativity in terms of novelty; “A creative design has to challenge the norm and the ordinary standards” (TH-13). Slightly less than novelty, 37.84% of the supplied definitions cited appropriateness; “a creative solu­tion should be flexible and serve the function” (TH-03). Only 5.40% of the definitions related to aesthetic aspects. Interestingly, no definitions involved technical merit.

Seventy-four percent of the US practitioners' definitions were associated with novelty, appropriateness, technical merit, and aesthetic appeal, while the other 26% included other considerations. The majority of the definitions (34.21%) viewed creativity as novelty: “I think creativity in design is really, really based on solving your client's problem in a unique way” (US-05). Further, 26.32% of the answers related to appropriateness. Judge US-09 underlined that “in the world of design and architecture, [a creative idea] has to create, elicit, an emotion, negative or positive, while still being fully functional.” In addition, 7.90% and 5.26% of the definitions involved technical merit and aesthetic appeal, respectively.

Interpretation of Results

The results of this study appear to reinforce three premises: creativity as a discipline-specific phenomenon, the universal perception of creativity in interior design, and the importance of persuasion in design creativity.

Creativity as a Discipline-Specific Phenomenon

Simon posits that creativity generally appears in “usual processes of human thinking…to produce something that is new and valuable” (Simon 2001). Baer argues that creativeness possibly occurs in a general situation; however, to create a creative performance in any discipline, expertise, knowledge, and skill sets in that discipline certainly appear necessary (Baer 2010). The findings of this study support Baer's argument, in that expertise in a specific domain affects how creativity is assessed and perceived. In looking at the realm of interior design, the current research reinforces essential roles of the domain and the field as the social aspects of creativity regarding Csikszentmihalyi's systems theory (Csikszentmihalyi 1988).

In this study, Thai and US experienced practitioners – the gatekeepers to and also the experts in interior design – showed consensus on their judgments of creative portfolios and defined creativity in design by sharing similar criteria, including but not limited to novelty, appropriateness, technical merit, and aesthetic appeal. Numerous aspects have been proposed to define creative outcomes across disciplines; nonetheless, the majority of scholars agree upon novelty and appropriateness (Averill 2005; Gruber and Wallace 1999; Hokanson 2010; Jackson and Messick 1965). In allied design fields, Barnard (interior design), Casakin and Kreitler (architecture), and Christiaans and Dorst and Cross (industrial design) recommended technical and aesthetic merits as discipline-relevant considerations to identify creative works (Barnard 1992; Casakin and Kreitler 2008; Christiaans 2002; Dorst and Cross 2001). This study reinforces these previous studies, in that design creativity involves novelty, appropriateness, and other domain-relevant aspects, including technical and aesthetic merits.

In discussing the results further, this research supports the importance of domain-relevant knowledge. As Csikszentmihalyi posits, to define creativity, one needs to have information that has been stored in “the symbol system of the culture, in the customary practices, the language, [or] the specific notation of the domain.” The following examples of creativity definitions supplied by designers in this research clearly support the previous notion.

Creativity, in my view, is initially derived from the understanding of the fundamentals. It is a collection of experiences in design, whether it is the great design that you have seen, the understanding of spaces or color schemes, or even the understanding of the overall composition. (TH-13)

Creativity is taking a space and making it work for the client, but also doing something unusual, something that you would not expect. That still works technically and will hold up over time in that it is unique to that space. (US-12)

Universal Perception of Creativity in Interior Design

We clearly see in this study that Thai and US practitioners showed a high level of agreement on their assessments of creative portfolios and their definitions of creativity. When reviewing creative portfolios, both groups of designers were mostly concerned with novelty, appropriateness, technical merit, aesthetic appeal, and other domain-relevant criteria, such as articulation and composition. Thus, the findings basically reinforce the universal perception of creativity in interior design, and imply that experienced designers from different cultures do share similar considerations in identifying creative design works.

Moreover, when discussing creative design works, Thai and US designers often mentioned visual design elements and associated the creative dimensions of novelty, appropriateness, technical merit, and aesthetic appeal with the design elements. For example, one practitioner described it as: “not just planes of color. It has textures…that had been considered as well as the shape of the space, and creativity and thoughts going further” (US-13).

Practitioners viewed a portfolio as novel because “the [concept] was unique and stood out from the others.” They considered a portfolio as appropriate when its content “responded to the reality limitation.” When evaluating technical merit, designers looked for “techniques that added [dimensions] to the work.” They considered “a good sense of [scale and proportion] and also a very good sense of [materials and color]” to assess aesthetic appeal.

Figure 16.4 condenses designers' perceptions of creativity in relation to the discipline and culture. Both Thai and US designers referred to novelty, appro­priateness, aesthetic appeal, exploration, design recognition, and organization in their conceptions of creativity. The results support Portillo's study indicating originality and exploration as related to creativity in allied design areas (Portillo 2002).

Figure 16.4

Most importantly, although this study considers interior design and culture as the domain influencing individuals' perceptions and abilities to identify creative outcomes, the findings disclose the stronger role of the discipline of interior design in shaping practitioners' perceptions of creativity by universal canons, values, and foci. This implies that designers seem unlikely to be completely insular. They do share similar fundamentals and standards even though they work in different areas of the world.

Although culture plays a weaker role in this study, it still influences practitioners' perceptions, including their own personal concepts of creativity. Thai and US designers generally agreed on their definitions of creativity; nonetheless, minor cultural distinctions emerged in their concepts. As Figure 16.4 illustrates, Thai designers considered flexibility and design solutions in their conceptions of design creativity; on the other hand, US designers recognized technical merit, emotional impact, imagination, and simplicity in theirs.

Additionally, cultural differentiation in practitioners' discernment of the portfolios was found. Although designers were unaware of where the portfolios were collected from, US participants could discern that they did not belong to US students. In assessing the Thai portfolios, Thai practitioners showed higher consensus in their judgments than did US designers. This implies that culture is a market-differentiating factor in the context of interior design. Designers from different countries seem to share similar standards in creating and judging design works (Ledoux and Ledoux 2010); however, culture still has an impact on design styles in each country.

Persuasion as an Important Factor in Discipline-Specific Creativity

In finalizing their hiring decisions, both Thai and US designers did not only assess creativity in portfolios; they also evaluated applicants' work capability, communication skills, and personality characteristics. Candidates should “present themselves in a way that clearly conveys their own identities” (TH-17) and must have “a sense of the person and their ability to work” (US-08). Interestingly, these findings reinforce the vital role of persuasion, the ability to communicate with others and persuade them of one's creative work, in design creativity (Simonton 1990).

MacKinnon (1962) supported this premise in a study exploring the personal characteristics of creative architects. He found that architects were “possessed of those qualities and attributes which underlie and lead to the achievement of social status.” In further examination of living architects in MacKinnon's research, Dudek and Hall revealed that the architects' success in the late stage of their careers necessarily involved commitment, drive, and persuasive skills (Dudek and Hall 1991). In line with this, Guest proposed a list of basic knowledge and skills that design practitioners consider essential for entry-level designers (Guest 2010). The top of the list consisted of “communication abilities” which distinguish “the successful designer from others,” “understanding and willingness to contribute to a team,” and “willingness to continue to learn.” Thus, to be creative in the design realm, designers should be able to solve design problems creatively as well as be capable of presenting and selling the solutions to co-workers and clients.

Conclusions

The findings of this research support the domain specificity and universal perception of creativity in interior design. They also suggest that persuasion is important in design creativity. Thai and US designers both considered novelty, appropriateness, technical merit, and aesthetic appeal as important aspects in determining overall creativity in portfolios. However, these dimensions did not stand alone, but were interrelated with other discipline-specific criteria. More importantly, the results confirm that a creative portfolio could enhance an applicant's potential to be called for an interview or even be hired. Nonetheless, designers also considered the applicant's work capability, communication skills, and personal characteristics when making a final decision.

Although judging creative design works and selecting creative designers involves several considerations, experienced professionals seem to share similar criteria, including but not limited to novelty, appropriateness, technical merit, and aesthetic appeal. Other discipline-specific factors influence designers' perceptions of creativity as well; however, these four creative attributes can be guidelines for educators to develop creativity that meets practitioner expectations.

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