Design Fixation: A Cloak of Many Colors

The term design fixation is often used interchangeably to refer to situations where designers limit their creative output because of an overreliance on features of preexisting designs, or more generally, an overreliance on a specific body of knowledge directly associated with a problem. In this paper, we argue that interdisciplinary interest in design fixation has led to increasingly broad definitions of the phenomenon which may be undermining empirical research efforts, educational efforts to minimize fixation, and the transdisciplinary distribution of knowledge about fixation effects. To address these issues, the authors recommend that researchers consider categorizing fixation phenomena into one of three classifications: unconscious adherence to the influence of prior designs, conscious blocks to change, and intentional resistance to new ideas. Next, we distinguish between concept-based design fixation, fixation to a specific class of known design concepts, and knowledge-based design fixation, fixation to a problem-specific knowledge base. With these distinctions in place, we propose a system of orders of design fixation, recommend methods for reducing fixation in inventive design, and recommend areas that are in need of further research within the field of design science.

[1]  Somwrita Sarkar,et al.  Unfixing Design Fixation: From Cause to Computer Simulation. , 2011 .

[2]  Monika Lumsdaine,et al.  Creative Problem Solving: Thinking Skills for a Changing World , 1994 .

[3]  Joachim Stempfle,et al.  Overcoming Organizational Fixation: Creating and Sustaining an Innovation Culture. , 2011 .

[4]  M. Lorenzen Creativity in context : Content, cost, chance and collection in the organization of the film industry , 2009 .

[5]  E. C. Cmm,et al.  on the Recognition of Speech, with , 2008 .

[6]  Julie S. Linsey,et al.  A Three‐Pronged Approach for Overcoming Design Fixation , 2011 .

[7]  Andrés Gómez de Silva Garza,et al.  Case-Based Reasoning in Design , 1995, IEEE Expert.

[8]  John S. Gero,et al.  Design and other types of fixation , 1996 .

[9]  Abraham M. Rutchick,et al.  The pen is mightier than the word: Object priming of evaluative standards , 2010 .

[10]  Donald W. Taylor,et al.  DOES GROUP PARTICIPATION WHEN USING BRAINSTORMING FACILITATE OR INHIBIT CREATIVE THINKING , 1958 .

[11]  D. Dahl,et al.  The Influence and Value of Analogical Thinking during New Product Ideation , 2002 .

[12]  Alan S. Brown,et al.  Cryptomnesia: Delineating inadvertent plagiarism. , 1989 .

[13]  Petra Badke-Schaub,et al.  The Influence of Different Pictorial Representations during Idea Generation. , 2011 .

[14]  W. Gordon Synectics: The Development of Creative Capacity , 1961 .

[15]  G. Bower,et al.  Eliciting cryptomnesia: unconscious plagiarism in a puzzle task. , 1993, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[16]  John S. Gero,et al.  Fixation and Commitment While Designing and its Measurement , 2011 .

[17]  Trina C. Kershaw,et al.  Multiple causes of difficulty in insight: the case of the nine-dot problem. , 2004, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[18]  D. A. Grant,et al.  A behavioral analysis of degree of reinforcement and ease of shifting to new responses in a Weigl-type card-sorting problem. , 1948, Journal of experimental psychology.

[19]  Hussein M. Yaghi,et al.  Relationships among experience, teacher efficacy, and attitudes toward the implementation of instructional innovation , 1997 .

[20]  Ivonne J. Figueroa,et al.  Reactive Task-Set Switching Ability, Not Working Memory Capacity, Predicts Change Blindness Sensitivity , 2011 .

[21]  K. Duncker,et al.  On problem-solving , 1945 .

[22]  N. Maier Reasoning in humans. II. The solution of a problem and its appearance in consciousness. , 1931 .

[23]  Abraham M. Rutchick,et al.  Shedding light on insight: Priming bright ideas. , 2010, Journal of experimental social psychology.

[24]  Robert J. Crutcher,et al.  The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. , 1993 .

[25]  Linden J. Ball,et al.  Spontaneous analogising in engineering design: a comparative analysis of experts and novices , 2004 .

[26]  Gabriela Goldschmidt,et al.  Avoiding Design Fixation: Transformation and Abstraction in Mapping from Source to Target , 2011 .

[27]  Tomasz Arciszewski Stochastic form optimization , 1988 .

[28]  Stellan Ohlsson,et al.  Deep Learning - How the Mind Overrides Experience , 2011 .

[29]  J. Gero Research Methods for Design Science Research: Computational and Cognitive Approaches , 2001 .

[30]  A. Luchins Mechanization in problem solving: The effect of Einstellung. , 1942 .

[31]  Robert J. Youmans Design Fixation in the Wild: Design Environments and Their Influence on Fixation , 2011 .

[32]  Richard L. Marsh,et al.  Item availability in cryptomnesia: Assessing its role in two paradigms of unconscious plagiarism. , 1995 .

[33]  R. Youmans,et al.  To thy own self be true: finding the utility of cognitive information feedback , 2005 .

[34]  Crispin Hales,et al.  Engineering design: a systematic approach , 1989 .

[35]  Robert J. Youmans,et al.  The effects of physical prototyping and group work on the reduction of design fixation , 2011 .

[36]  Seda Yilmaz,et al.  Cognitive heuristics in design: Instructional strategies to increase creativity in idea generation , 2010, Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing.

[37]  T. B. Ward,et al.  The inadvertent use of prior knowledge in a generative cognitive task , 1999, Memory & cognition.

[38]  Allan Collins,et al.  A spreading-activation theory of semantic processing , 1975 .

[39]  Tomasz Arciszewski,et al.  Evolutionary computation and structural design: A survey of the state-of-the-art , 2005 .

[40]  Robert J. Youmans,et al.  Individual Differences in Cognitive Flexibility Predict Poetry Originality , 2013, HCI.

[41]  Tomasz Arciszewski,et al.  Evolutionary computation in civil engineering: research frontiers , 2001 .

[42]  Donald A. Schön Designing: Rules, types and worlds , 1988 .

[43]  Janet L. Kolodner,et al.  Case-Based Reasoning , 1989, IJCAI 1989.

[44]  Petra Badke-Schaub,et al.  Fixation or Inspiration: Creative Problem Solving in Design , 2011 .

[45]  Benjamin D. Jee,et al.  Fudging the Numbers: Distributing Chocolate Influences Student Evaluations of an Undergraduate Course , 2007 .

[46]  Constantine Sedikides,et al.  Nostalgia , 2008 .