Meaning-based assessment in creative design

The paper reports a novel approach to the assessment of design creativity by means of the meaning system. The introduction of main constructs of meaning corresponding to the theory of meaning by Kreitler and Kreitler, is followed by the presentation of theoretical and empirical considerations supporting the hypothesis that it is possible to assess design creativity in terms of the meaning system. An empirical study is presented, describing one specific set of meaning variables, i.e., types of relation that was found in previous studies to differentiate significantly between the more and less creative participants. The findings confirmed the expectation that this particular set of meaning variables - types of relations - characterizes the more creative students as compared to the less creative ones. The results showed that the more creative designers tended to focus on the personal-subjective meanings, as well as on some components of the interpersonally-shared meanings, whereas the less creative designers focused mainly on the interpersonally-shared meanings.