Design Feedback that Stimulates Children’s Creative Thinking

A Feedback Intervention

Abstract

Designing is an inherently creative process in which divergent (generative) and convergent (evaluative) thinking drive the creation and development of a design. Nevertheless, navigating these creative thinking processes is not an easy endeavour, especially for young novice designers. In Design & Technology education, design feedback is often seen as an essential pedagogical tool to help guide novice designers’ divergent and convergent paths while designing. Although design feedback can help the creative design process greatly, this does not happen by default. This paper reports on the construction and utilization of a design feedback intervention during a real-life design project with two groups of primary school children (aged 7-12). The goal of the intervention was to stimulate the young novice designers’ creative thinking by guiding the design feedback dialogues with their peers and clients. It guides convergent and divergent design feedback to minimize the resistance towards the feedback and creates openness for new processes of reflection, evaluation, and generation. Our main contribution entails a detailed understanding of the successes and obstacles within the feedback dialogues, as guided by the new feedback intervention, and possible future improvements. Overall, the results show that the intervention can support young novice designers, their peers, and clients in engaging in constructive feedback dialogues, thereby stimulating their creative thinking.