The development of digital architecture implementation in education increases the
amount of architectural competition at student level. However, there is a gap in digital process
and design thinking and skill between students who often won the architectural competition
and the others who never won. In this research, it will compare the difference of digital design
process and design thinking between the winner and average architecture student. This
research can be beneficial to lecturers, curriculum, and left behind architecture students, and
become a supplementary for books in architecture design thinking and design process. The
method of this research is qualitative method. The research focused on the conceptual design
to schematic design which is the most common academic architecture format. This phase is
also the most impactful in design thinking and digital design process. To have a comprehensive
finding in architecture design thinking, the digital design process must be researched from
start to end. The average architecture and winner architecture student were interviewed 20
questions that have been validated theory reference and ask them to ask some suggestions for
additional questions for winner architecture student. Then, all of the interviews were
transcribed, and the result was compared and concluded. This research is past-experience
oriented. The weakness of this method is the possibility of biasing information and false
memory. However, based on time limitations, this is the most reasonable method to conduct.