Constructing Creativity Indicator and Systematical Creativity Scale for Interior Design Students in College Education

This study aims to develop an assessment tool regarding creativity of college students from interior design related majors. According to Csikszentmihalyi’s systems model of creativity, this study integrates affecting factors of creativity from person, society, and culture system as its research foundation. Later, it invites 17 winning students from national interior design competition and 19 teachers with lavish teaching experiences for initial interview. After interview analysis, this study comes up with 156 creativity indicators. An expert meeting with 15 scholars and experts is followed to extract and narrow the 156 indicators to 130. The study then conducts questionnaire to 30 experts with over seven years of teaching experiences using the 130 indicators. Analysis from expert questionnaire shows that 124 indicators are filtered and selected for the final creativity assessment tool. The study results also point out that the top three dimensions that affect students’ creativity are ability, thinking, and personality accordingly, while the bottom three are family, student club, and motivation. Regarding the top three influential indicators of creativity are nimble usage of knowledge, passionate about innovation, and love to image. The results of this study can be used as references for the development of creativity scale and the implement of school creativity teaching.


Introduction
Creativity is the dominating force of design competitiveness, especially when every country sets creative industry as its competition niche. Taiwan aims to mark creativity as the foundation of national competitiveness, thus, it lists creative industry on its national development priority. University is a nation's cradle of high-end specialty. University education has gigantic influence on professional competitiveness regarding all career fields, as the cultivation of creativity plays an imperative role among all. Regarding interior design specialty, it is extremely vigorous to inspire, cultivate, and promote students' professional creativity. It would be beneficial to curriculum context and implementation if a framework of reliability and validity with systematical creativity indicator is established based on outstanding students' academic performance.
When it comes to design industry, creative genius relates to function and pleasure determines the value and popularity of one's work. Nevertheless, how is creativity originated? What does it take to gain better creativity? What affects creativity? Unfortunately, these essential questions to design industry have never been taken seriously. And it points out the importance of this study.
Academic research studies concerning creativity has accumulated considerable amount worldwide. Two principal research directions are: (1) Human characteristics oriented, i.e., mental intelligence, knowledge, perception skills, personality, and motivation. (2) Environmental element oriented, i.e., natural environment, family environment, school or working environment, career filed, and culture [1], [2], [3], [4]. Recently, scholars are gradually paying attention to the impacts to personal creativity from diverse perspectives to explore the combination of multi-factor, including culture, society, organization, team, school, peers, family, and environment [5], [6], [7], [8], [3]. Csikszentmihalyi proposes the flow of creativity that includes personal and environmental factors is considered the chef-d'oeuvre [9]. Systematical creativity considers creativity as a gestalt. It is difficult to explain creativity on the individual aspects, including personality, motivation, thinking, or creation. Creative work often needs approval of others, while creative thinking and resource are influenced by time and culture. This study adopts Csikszentmihalyi's systems model of creativity to discover the systematic creativity indicator of interior design. The purposes of this study are: (1) Analyzing the creating process of interior design major students to initiate an indicator system of systematic creativity. (2) Constructing a creativity scale of systematic creativity of interior design major students to discuss important indicator items that affect their creativity. The study results can be used to establish creativity scale as well as to cultivate students' creativity among interior design related academic majors.

Definition of Creativity
In 1950, the president of American Psychological Association, Dr. J. P. Guilford urges more devotion of creativity research from the academy field. The development of creativity research has been rising over five decades, especially in the recent 20 to 30 years, cultivation of student's creativity has become the education trend and focus worldwide. Relevant academic research and literatures are plentiful and versatile. However, it remains a controversial topic to define creativity and to assess it. Educators and psychologists see it differently. From the ability to invent, divergent thinking or productive thinking, to imagination or dual association ability, creativity can be anything and everything. Some believe that novelty, uniqueness, value, transformation, and exquisites are essence of creativity. Some consider creativity as the ability to solve problems effectively, which includes fluency, flexibility, individuality, redefinition, elaboration, expression, productivity, originality, and sensitivity. It can also be the ability to unite or connect elements into a new relation [10].
Chen [11] combines viewpoints from Runco et al [12] and sorts out the following 25 aspects of creative personality: inner motivation, endurance, perseverance, enjoy working, discipline and responsibility, stamina, enthusiasm, diligence, inquisitiveness doubtful to hypothesis, avoid fixed perception, attentiveness to novelty, innovation, distinctiveness, imagination, comprehension, flexibility, mental image, advantageous, courageous, fabrication, curiosity, vigilance, independence, and challenge the traditions. Creativity is indeed a complex concept, while the interpretation to it vary from viewpoints and research orientation. Even Torrance, who spent most of his life working on creativity argues that creativity is hard to clearly defined [13]. These diverse and versatile perspectives reflect how complex creativity is. To define creativity based on the particular aspect one wishes to find out might be an appropriate and practical approach.

Systematical Creativity
This study adopts Csikszentmihalyi's systems model of creativity [2], [14]. Csikszentmihalyi points out that creativity is composed of three elements, including domain, field, and person [9]. Csikszentmihalyi also argues that creativity does not always result from personal characteristics, much of it depends on acceptance regarding its creation by the domain gatekeeper to be counted in its field. A person would not own the distinctive creativity if he/she is not edified by the domain. Systems model of creativity integrates personal and environmental elements, which strongly believes that creativity results from the interaction of three main systems, include domain (cultural system), field (social system), and person (personal system) ( Figure 1). [15].

Figure 1. Systems model of creativity by Csikszentmihalyi
According to Csikszentmihalyi, creativity is domainrelated, different domains generate different creativities. Though different domains share the common "general creativity", different specialty belongs to its own unique domain, where "distinctive creativity" exists in. Csikszentmihalyi argues that creativity does not always result from personal characteristics, much of it depends on acceptance regarding its creation by the domain gatekeeper. A person would not own the distinctive creativity if he/she is not edified by the domain. Creativity would only appear in the existing filed. That is to say, if a person has never been trained or edified by professional domain and knowledge, no professional creativity would be generated. Gardner points out that the extensive and influential creative response is surely connected to certain domain, involving in various skills, wide-ranging knowledge, and a significant professional training period [16]. To interior design, creativity shares common "general creativity" with other domains, while it retains its "distinctive creativity". If students wish to have extensive and influential creative responses, they must undergo a vital professional training period to cultivate and nourish the unique knowledge and skills. Therefore, one should fully understand the specialty and uniqueness of certain field before evaluating interior design students' professional creativity and their creations' creative level.
Csikszentmihalyi's systems model of creativity still remains as conceptual. It has not been experimented or examined yet. There is no relative research study that adopts comprehensive and systematic viewpoints so far.

Creativity Assessment
Creativity is an abstract potential concept. Different theory followers use different research methods to interpret creativity. Mayer sorts out six approaches of creativity research. 1. Psychometric approach sees creativity as a mental attribute. 2. Experimental approach considers it as a cognitive process. 3. Biographical approach believes individual creativity is distinctive. 4. Biological approach argues that creativity is a brain activity. 5. Computational approach takes creativity as a mental calculation. 6. Contextual approach focuses on social, cultural, and evolutionary context [17].
There are two types of creativity indicator regarding knowledge according to Chung [19]. One is related to knowledge gaining access, including getting professional knowledge from professionals, school teachers, and the internet. The other is related to knowledge gaining method, including getting knowledge by different instructions, practices, and lessons.
In addition, diverse methods result in various creativity research design and tools. This study covers from creativity process, indicator, scale, to norm establishment. Hence, the assessment comprises creativity input, creativity process, and creativity output. Regarding creativity assessment of input and process that related to individuals, divergent thinking test is used for review and analysis. The assessment tool and indicator for creativity output regarding creation is based on features of interior design work that presented to human, i.e. the combination of shape, color, and quality in three dimensional space. For a certain professional field, because it involves in different skills, various types of knowledge, and a critical specialized training period [16], the professional creativity should be established on comprehensive professional know-how and training, as well as its creativity indicator be distinctive from other professions.

Research Method and Flow
This study adopts Csikszentmihalyi's systems model of creativity, relative theories, and literatures. It firstly initiates 10 dimensions, including personality, motivation, ability, knowledge, thinking, family, school, student club, criteria, and stakeholder. Then, 17 interview questions are sorted out based on context of these 10 dimensions. Interview participants are selected from: (1) Winning students from national interior design competitions in 2016. 17 valid participants in total, coded from S-1 to S-17. (2) College and university interior or space design teachers with over seven years of teaching experience. They are asked to answer questions regarding students' creativity based on their rich teaching experiences and observation. 19 valid participants, coded as A-1 to A-19. Interview record is typed, modified, and confirmed with the participants. Three experts are invited to discuss the interview results and sort out 10 dimensions with 156 creativity indicators.
An expert meeting is held with 15 experts from both interior design industry and academic field in order to extract and examine the 156 indicators from 10 dimensions. The meeting narrows them down to 130 indicators and categorizes them into a questionnaire. The questionnaire is conducted to 30 experts with over seven years of interior design teaching experiences to discuss influences these indicators have on students' creativity. Influences are classified from 1 to 10, bigger number indicates higher influence to the students. The study collects 30 valid questionnaires in total. Kolmogorov-Smirnov test is used to examine its goodness of fit (K-S test is suitable for small sample examination, while the exam efficiency is better as well) to see the expert opinions belongs to normal distribution or non-normal distribution. This is followed by Fuzzy Delphi Method to filter its question item selection. Based on Center of Gravity (COG) by Klir & Yuan to evaluate and filter all indicators [20]. With COG formula: S k = (a k +b k +c k )/3 (fuzzy number= (maximum value + minimum value+ geometric mean) /3), the fuzzy number filter value the study gets is 7.27. Question items with lower filter value than 7.27 are eliminated, while the rest are considered to be the essential and valid indicators. These indicators can be used as references for systematic creativity development research.

Research Results and Conclusions
Followings are the analysis results of the normal parameter, K-S test, and fuzzy number filter value of the 130 indicators under the 10 dimension. A K-S test is used to examine the normal distribution of expert opinion, asymptotic significance (two-tailed). H0 is rejected at significance level lower than .05, showing significant observed frequency and theoretical frequency. The result indicates that expert opinion is not normally distributed. × is indicates non normal distribution indicator (expert opinions are consistent). B Filter value of fuzzy number is set up by fuzzy number of all indicators. It is set at 6.21 (minimum value is 1, maximum value is 10, and the geometric mean of all fuzzy number is 7.63). ◎ indicates its fuzzy number is higher than filter value, while indicates deleted indicators, and the entire row is marked in grey