The Impact of Example Modality and Physical Interactions on Design Creativity

Abstract

Interacting with example products is an essential and widely practiced method in engineering design, yet little information exists on how the representation (pictorial or physical) or interaction a designer has with an example impacts design creativity. This is problematic because without this knowledge we do not understand how examples affect idea generation or how we can effectively modify or develop design methods to support example usage practices. In this paper, we report the results of a controlled study with first year engineering design students (N = 89) developed to investigate the impact of a designer's interaction with either a two-dimensional (2D) pictorial image or a three-dimensional (3D) product (through visual inspection or product dissection activities) and the resulting functional focus and creativity of the ideas developed. The results of this study reveal that participants who interacted with the physical example produced ideas that were less novel and less functionally focused than those who interacted with the 2D representation. Additionally, the results showed that participants who dissected the product produced a higher variety of ideas than those that visually inspected it. These results contribute to our understanding of the benefits and role of 2D and 3D designer-product interactions during idea development. We use these findings to develop recommendations for the use of designer-product interactions throughout the design process.

Inspiration and Fixation: The Influences of Example Designs and System Properties in Idea Generation

“…Consistent with the fluency results, the diversity results reveal that the exploration of the solution space was not influenced by the type of stimulus seen, but by the exposure to any example and by the number of stimuli seen. The first finding is consistent with many design creativity experiments, which found that the presence of a stimulus reduced the diversity of the ideas generated by participants because the participants were confined to solutions similar to the stimulus seen [11,66,85]. On the other hand, the second finding is inconsistent with previous research, which stated that diverse stimuli can activate different aspects of a participant's knowledge, thus encouraging an increased diversity of ideas [39].…”

“…It is important to note that we are here using the term 'abstract' (as in 'abstract system properties) in a particular way. We consider the level of abstraction of the content of the inspiration sources and not the level of abstraction of the representation of the inspiration source -an aspect that has already been the subject of comprehensive investigation [27,65,66]. As such, the term 'abstract' might be used in other ways in the literature, describing different variables that are being manipulated.…”

Large-Scale Needfinding: Methods of Increasing User-Generated Needs From Large Populations

“…Retaining contextual information may potentially trigger useful insights [1,50]. Visual examples have been used previously for priming and mitigating fixation in ideation, and the effects have been positive as well as negative [37,39,51]; however, this study presented images for a more general purpose. The images were assembled to be more than a set of visual examples of problems.…”

Confirmation Bias in Adoption of Seeker Exemplars in Crowdsourcing Ideation Contests

“…For example, Figure 1 show seekers providing examples of the types of pictures that they are looking for. Such solution exemplars can help solvers frame the focal problems, evaluate the originality of their ideas, and determine potential flaws or limitations (Herring et al 2009;Smith et al 1993;Toh and Miller 2014). Moreover, these exemplars can serve as signals of seekers' preferences, which are a key determinant of winning solutions (Koh Forthcoming;Terwiesch and Xu 2008).…”