The need for engineering design students to understand that creativity is an important part of their educational development and also for a sound basis for their future role in industry has been well established. This paper will discuss the foundations of engineering design within this context and highlight the problems confronting students who are required to make a creative input to a design problem and describe a view on how to implement ‘creativityrsquo; in teaching engineering design through the experiences learnt while undertaking an interdepartmental project. The motivation for this work has arisen from the need to improve a student's ability to think creatively and in the long term, to improve the design of future products. Experiences from teaching creativity within an interdepartmental project will be given.