Neurophysiological Evidence in Idea Generation: Differences Between Designers and Engineers

Colombo, Sara; Mazza, Alessandro; Montagna, Francesca; Ricci, Raffaella; Monte, Olga Dal; Cantamessa, Marco

doi:10.1017/dsd.2020.161

Cited by 8 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 30 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…(Goldschmidt and Smolkov, 2006) • During the idea generation phase, engineers activate brain regions involved in the structured and rule-based design, and planning, aiming at well-defined goals. Architects show activations related to the elaboration process of information and creative insights (Vieira et al, 2019) • Industrial designers have a more pronounced process of inhibition of external stimuli than Engineering designers (Colombo et al, 2020) Expertise…”

Section: The Resulting Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Investigating the differences between engineering and industrial design students, Colombo et al . (2020) found that in the latter, the process of inhibition of external stimuli is more pronounced than in engineers. From the analysis of selected contributions for this review, there is no evidence of the difference in neurophysiological signals due to different features of stimuli and different participants’ backgrounds. Expertise. As with Protocol Analyses, expertise is the most investigated external factor among neurophysiological studies.…”

Section: Other Factors Influencing Idea Generationmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…In contrast, the latter show different activations (temporal and occipital right cortex) related to the elaboration process of information and creative insights while generating new ideas. Investigating the differences between engineering and industrial design students, Colombo et al (2020) found that in the latter, the process of inhibition of external stimuli is more pronounced than in engineers.…”

Section: Other Factors From Neurophysiological Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

A comparative review on the role of stimuli in idea generation

Blandino

Montagna

Cantamessa

et al. 2023

AIEDAM

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper reports a systematic literature review with the aim of determining the role of stimuli and other factors, such as timing, the designers’ background, expertise, and experience, in the idea generation phase of conceptual design related to engineering and industrial design and architecture. “Stimulus” is a general expression for a source of information characterized by several features, including the source (internal or external), analogical distance (near or far), and form (textual, visual, or other). Several recent studies have been conducted on this topic involving neurophysiological measurements with significant results. This comprehensive review will help to determine if the neurophysiological results are consistent with those from protocol studies. This allows for determining how the features of stimuli affect – among the related factors – designers’ performance in idea generation. The literature search was carried out using the Snowball and PRISMA methods. A total of 72 contributions were selected from studies adopting protocol analysis or neurophysiological measurements. This study presents a framework to support the selection of stimuli most likely to maximize performance, based on the designer's background and expertise in the different idea generation metrics. The main findings of the framework suggest that visual stimuli enhance the creative performance of designers, regardless of their background, while textual stimuli foster the variety and quality of ideas, but only in engineering and industrial designers. Comparing the findings, the resulting framework reveals aspects of stimuli that require further investigation. These can be considered valuable insights for new directions for design research.

show abstract

Section: The Resulting Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Other Factors Influencing Idea Generationmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Other Factors From Neurophysiological Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

A comparative review on the role of stimuli in idea generation

Blandino

Montagna

Cantamessa

et al. 2023

AIEDAM

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This study shares similarities with the idea generation study by Colombo et al (2020) in which AUT and eye-tracking explore the differences between designers and engineers.…”

Section: Similar Researchmentioning

confidence: 86%

Inspirational Stimuli Improve Idea Fluency during Ideation: A Replication and Extension Study with Eye-Tracking

et al. 2022

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We replicate a design ideation experiment (Goucher-Lambert et al., 2019) with and without inspirational stimuli and extend data collection sources to eye-tracking and a think aloud protocol to provide new insights into generated ideas. Preliminary results corroborate original findings: inspirational stimuli have an effect on idea output and questionnaire ratings. Near and far inspirational stimuli increased participants’ idea fluency over time and were rated more useful than control. We further enable experiment reproducibility and provide publicly available data.

show abstract

“…This study focused on design education and shows differences only for design students during the time of day regarding the originality of the outcomes. Several studies showed the relevance of background in designers' EEG responses (e.g., Colombo et al, 2020;Vieira et al, 2020).…”

Section: Conceptual Design Idea Generation and Divergent Thinkingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chronobiology in Divergent Thinking: How Designers Are Affected by Time of Day

2023

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Chronobiology is the science that studies the role of time in biology. The study of time in human bodies revealed the presence of internal rhythms related to the time of day. Considering divergent thinking as one of the essential cognitive activities of conceptual design, this paper presents the results of investigating the effect of time of day on designers’ brain activity while performing divergent thinking tasks. An experiment was run with a revised Alternative Uses Task, measuring brain activity with an electroencephalogram (EEG) device. Students with different educational backgrounds were recruited for this experiment, including engineering and industrial design students, to determine if the time of day affected them differently. The brain waves and related power results show significant differences with respect to the time of day and educational background. The differences are particularly evident considering the interaction of these factors. Further studies are required to understand the relationship between the differences detected and the designers’ behavioural performance and to identify which time of day is most effective for idea-generation activities for designers.

show abstract

Neurophysiological Evidence in Idea Generation: Differences Between Designers and Engineers

Cited by 8 publications

References 30 publications

A comparative review on the role of stimuli in idea generation

A comparative review on the role of stimuli in idea generation

Inspirational Stimuli Improve Idea Fluency during Ideation: A Replication and Extension Study with Eye-Tracking

Chronobiology in Divergent Thinking: How Designers Are Affected by Time of Day

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About