Multidimensional Creativity in Novice and Expert Architectural Design Outcomes: Exploratory Gender Comparisons

Creativity is central to design, yet limited research has explored how expertise relates to multiple dimensions of design outcomes or whether these patterns are similar across women and men. This study compared 20 practicing architects and 20 architecture students, treating gender as a secondary exploratory grouping variable. Participants completed a 55-minute architectural design task, and two experienced design educators independently rated Novelty, Usefulness, Surprise, Elaboration, and Overall Creativity. Architects received significantly higher ratings than students across all five dimensions, both overall and within the women and men subgroups, with large effect size values. No statistically significant gender differences were found within expertise levels. These findings characterize creative expertise as multidimensional and suggest that expertise was more strongly associated with creative performance than gender in this sample. Correspondence analysis further indicated distinct expertise-related creativity profiles and exploratory variation among the gender-defined subgroups. The results also identify directions for future process-oriented and AI-supported studies of design creativity.