Empowering non-designers with tangible tools for divergent thinking

Design Thinking (DT) has emerged as a pivotal approach harnessed by professionals across domains beyond traditional design practices. To reap its benefits, designers rely on sketching, but non-designers hesitate to do so. This paper investigates an alternative tool to engage non-designers effectively in the design process. A comparative study was conducted, juxtaposing the use of pen & paper against tangible figurative toys, assessing the creative outcomes through Torrance’s framework for creative thinking. 36 participants were tasked with producing two web interface designs using one or both tools, according to four different conditions. While pen & paper yielded a greater quantity of ideas, they fell short in generating a broader spectrum of idea categories or more original concepts. Using a tangible tool resulted in more elaborate proposals. Figurative tangibles appear to exhibit a greater affordance for divergent thinking compared to pen & paper, despite imposing a higher cognitive effort on participants.