Creative metacognition in design thinking: exploring theories, educational practices, and their implications for measurement

Abstract

Design thinking is a well-established practical and educational approach to fostering high-level creativity and innovation, which has been refined since the 1950s with the participation of experts like Joy Paul Guilford and Abraham Maslow. Through real-world projects, trainees learn to optimize their creative outcomes by developing and practicing creative cognition and metacognition. This paper provides a holistic perspective on creativity, enabling the formulation of a comprehensive theoretical framework of creative metacognition. It focuses on the design thinking approach to creativity and explores the role of metacognition in four areas of creativity expertise: Products, Processes, People, and Places. The analysis includes task-outcome relationships (product metacognition), the monitoring of strategy effectiveness (process metacognition), an understanding of individual or group strengths and weaknesses (people metacognition), and an examination of the mutual impact between environments and creativity (place metacognition). It also reviews measures taken in design thinking education, including a distribution of cognition and metacognition, to support students in their development of creative mastery. On these grounds, we propose extended methods for measuring creative metacognition with the goal of enhancing comprehensive assessments of the phenomenon. Proposed methodological advancements include accuracy sub-scales, experimental tasks where examinees explore problem and solution spaces, combinations of naturalistic observations with capability testing, as well as physiological assessments as indirect measures of creative metacognition.

Nurturing Sustainability Changemakers through Transformative Learning Using Design Thinking: Evidence from an Exploratory Qualitative Study

“…This is grounded in an often-cited idea from Wilkinson and Cary [30]: "We face a dynamic process where the starting point cannot be a fixed idea of sustainability; rather, it must be a social consensus we consider unsustainable." This point of view aligns with the human-centeredness of DT [61]. The roots of the approach are from the work of Sustainability Transitions, which focuses on developing shared strategies for change based on a shared consensus of the needs of people affected by the change [26,82].…”

“…In that process, people's self-efficacy is increased by having them attempt and accomplish increasingly more complex tasks [40,43,58]. When used repeatedly, DT promotes "creative confidence" or mindsets that support "creative self-efficacy" [51,61]. Studies show DT increases participants' confidence [62,63], which is critical to preparing changemakers to lead sustainability transitions.…”

“…As discussed above, sustainability is a contested concept. Thus, DT is a good match with sustainability because it is well suited for addressing wicked problems [61,63,80]. This application was understood by students: "Design thinking methodology proved itself again to be a very robust process to uncover or create new solutions to a 'wicked problem.'…”

“…It is important to remember that creative self-efficacy is an emergent outcome resulting from all the programme elements coming together [51,61] instead of being a one-off, as reflected by the students' end-of-programme reflections.…”

UI/UX Development of Mobile-based Palembang-Indonesia Dictionary application using Design Thinking Method

“…Ini melibatkan lima tahap: Empathize, Define, ideate, prototype, dan Test. Melalui proyek dunia nyata, peserta pelatihan belajar untuk mengoptimalkan hasil kreatif mereka dengan mengembangkan dan mempraktikkan kognisi kreatif dan metakognisi [15]. Metode design thinking ini adalah pendekatan positif dan konstruktif di mana solusi dirancang dan diuji keefektifannya [16].…”