The Influence of Visual Stimulus Diversity on Students' Creativity at Architectural Design Studio 1

Although there are different studies about the relation of within-domain and between domain stimuli with creativity, the impact of their variation has not been discussed. Moreover, there are just few studies concerning the relation between the different stimuli and divergent and convergent thinking in architecture students. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of stimuli variation on students’ creativity as well as divergent and convergent thinking. In these experiments, between-domain and within-domain stimuli are used simultaneously, consecutively and alone. Participants are architecture students in “Architectural Design I” at Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman. This course is their first design experience. The creativity of design products is scored. Judges grade originality and practicality foreach product. The outcomes are analyzed by ANOVA. The results demonstrate that variation has no effect on students’ creativity. divergent thinking and novelty are improved by using within-domain stimuli alone. In none of the experiments the practicality and convergent thinking have been affected.