Aspects of a study of creative thinking and knowledge application

An empirical study in the form of survey was conducted investigating design students’ cognitive processes. The aim of this study was to identify specific knowledge for application by students classified as creative in product design. We specifically collected data from China and the UK, representing the Western and Eastern cultures. The results identified six knowledge items, e.g. knowledge of user trails, ergonomics, which were applied at a high frequency in FYDP by creative students, measured by the Metacognition Awareness Inventory (MAI), in both China and the UK. Moreover, we found that Chinese participants with higher creative thinking ability may tend to apply more knowledge of aesthetics, organisation, marketing, and skills to operate relevant machines in a design process, whereas the UK’s participants with higher creative thinking ability would be more likely to apply knowledge of client needs and information processing to a larger degree.