Where next for research on fixation, inspiration and creativity in design?

This is a report from an international workshop focused on the future of design fixation research within the broader context of work on creativity and inspiration. Fixation studies have already generated many useful results but there are clear opportunities to better connect with work done on other related concepts and work done in other disciplines. This would allow fixation research to broaden and strengthen its methodological approaches, offering richer insights into how design ideas originate and how they subsequently evolve. Such knowledge could then be applied to influence the development of design education, training and tools. In this way, fixation research would maximize its potential to provide insights into the creative process, improve design practice and thereby support innovation.

[1]  Matthijs Baas,et al.  The dual pathway to creativity model: Creative ideation as a function of flexibility and persistence , 2010 .

[2]  J P Kassirer,et al.  Cognitive errors in diagnosis: instantiation, classification, and consequences. , 1989, The American journal of medicine.

[3]  Jonathan Evans.  Dual-processing accounts of reasoning, judgment, and social cognition. , 2008, Annual review of psychology.

[4]  William Goddard.  Transfer and einstellung effects of examples on devising computer algorithms , 1976 .

[5]  Luis A. Vasconcelos,et al.  Inspiration and fixation: Questions, methods, findings, and challenges , 2016 .

[6]  Thomas J. Howard,et al.  OVERCOMING DESIGN FIXATION THROUGH EDUCATION AND CREATIVITY METHODS , 2013 .

[7]  D. Kahneman.  Thinking, Fast and Slow , 2011 .

[8]  Erik Dane.  Reconsidering the Trade-off Between Expertise and Flexibility: a Cognitive Entrenchment Perspective , 2010 .

[9]  R. Weisberg,et al.  Following the wrong footsteps: fixation effects of pictorial examples in a design problem-solving task. , 2005, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[10]  Nigel Cross,et al.  Winning by design: the methods of Gordon Murray, racing car designer , 1996 .

[11]  Steven A. Sloman,et al.  Artifact categorization: The good, the bad, and the ugly , 2007 .

[12]  D. Ariely,et al.  The 'IKEA Effect': When Labor Leads to Love , 2011 .

[13]  K. Bailey.  Typologies and taxonomies: An introduction to classification techniques. , 1994 .

[14]  Jon-Michael Deldin,et al.  The AskNature Database: Enabling Solutions in Biomimetic Design , 2014 .

[15]  Peter Lloyd,et al.  Influences on Solution Search Processes in Design Organisations , 1999 .

[16]  Will Tracz,et al.  Computer programming and the human thought process , 1979, Softw. Pract. Exp..

[17]  Petra Badke-Schaub,et al.  Inspiration peak: exploring the semantic distance between design problem and textual inspirational stimuli , 2013 .

[18]  C. Blank.  SAGE handbook of mixed methods in social & behavioral research , 2013 .

[19]  Peter McLeod,et al.  Why good thoughts block better ones. , 2014, Scientific American.

[20]  Alan F. Blackwell,et al.  Sketching across design domains: Roles and formalities , 2012, Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing.

[21]  Gina Brown,et al.  Blind in one eye: How psychological ownership of ideas affects the types of suggestions people adopt , 2012 .

[22]  R. Nickerson.  Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises , 1998 .

[23]  H. Barrett,et al.  Functional Fixedness in a Technologically Sparse Culture , 2005, Psychological science.

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

[25]  L. H. Shu,et al.  Using templates and mapping strategies to support analogical transfer in biomimetic design , 2013 .

[26]  Avigail Sachs,et al.  `Stuckness' in the design studio , 1999 .

[27]  Peter Lloyd,et al.  Does experience enable or impede the design process , 1999 .

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

[29]  Stephen H Adamo,et al.  Examining perceptual and conceptual set biases in multiple-target visual search , 2015, Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics.

[30]  T. B. Ward.  Structured Imagination: the Role of Category Structure in Exemplar Generation , 1994, Cognitive Psychology.

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

[32]  Roger E. Beaty,et al.  Creative motivation: Creative achievement predicts cardiac autonomic markers of effort during divergent thinking , 2014, Biological Psychology.

[33]  David Radcliffe,et al.  Impact of CAD tools on creative problem solving in engineering design , 2009, Comput. Aided Des..

[34]  Robert J. Winter Cpt.  Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns, and Practices , 2014 .

[35]  Pieter E. Vermaas,et al.  A logical critique of the expert position in design research: beyond expert justification of design methods and towards empirical validation , 2016, Design Science.

[36]  Ian Dennis,et al.  Cognitive processes in engineering design: a longitudinal study , 1994 .

[37]  David R. Wallace,et al.  The influence of sketch quality on perception of product-idea creativity , 2012, Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing.

[38]  D. Lane,et al.  Einstellung: Knowledge of the Phenomenon Facilitates Problem Solving , 1993 .

[39]  Ben J Hicks,et al.  A comparison of designer activity using core design situations in the laboratory and practice , 2013 .

[40]  Daniel L. Schacter,et al.  Priming effects in word-fragment completion are independent of recognition memory. , 1982 .

[41]  K. Eisenhardt.  Building theories from case study research , 1989, STUDI ORGANIZZATIVI.

[42]  Maria C. Yang,et al.  A Step Beyond to Overcome Design Fixation: A Design-by-Analogy Approach , 2015 .

[43]  Karin Baier,et al.  Design Thinking Understanding How Designers Think And Work , 2016 .

[44]  Robin Roy,et al.  Case studies of creativity in innovative product development , 1993 .

[45]  A. Cropley.  In Praise of Convergent Thinking , 2006 .

[46]  Stephen Culley,et al.  Beyond the concept: characterisations of later-stage creative behaviour in design , 2016, Research in Engineering Design.

[47]  Jonathan Cagan,et al.  THE MEANING OF "NEAR" AND "FAR": THE IMPACT OF STRUCTURING DESIGN DATABASES AND THE EFFECT OF DISTANCE OF ANALOGY ON DESIGN OUTPUT , 2012 .

[48]  Eleni Stroulia,et al.  Askjef: Integration of Case-Based and Multimedia Technologies for Interface Design Support , 1992 .

[49]  K L Shapiro,et al.  Temporary suppression of visual processing in an RSVP task: an attentional blink? . , 1992, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[50]  C. Chabris,et al.  Gorillas in Our Midst: Sustained Inattentional Blindness for Dynamic Events , 1999, Perception.

[51]  R. Sternberg,et al.  The concept of creativity: Prospects and paradigms. , 1998 .

[52]  K. Dunbar.  How scientists think: On-line creativity and conceptual change in science. , 1997 .

[53]  Robert J. Youmans,et al.  Design fixation: Classifications and modern methods of prevention , 2014, Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing.

[54]  Alberto Marradi,et al.  Classification, typology, taxonomy , 1990 .

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

[56]  H. Simon,et al.  The Processes of Creative Thinking , 1959 .

[57]  C. Abraham,et al.  A taxonomy of behavior change techniques used in interventions. , 2008, Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association.

[58]  S. Budner.  Intolerance of ambiguity as a personality variable. , 1962, Journal of personality.

[59]  John Clarkson,et al.  Models of designing , 2005 .

[60]  H. Pashler,et al.  Editors’ Introduction to the Special Section on Replicability in Psychological Science , 2012, Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

[61]  Joel Arthur Barker,et al.  Paradigms: The Business of Discovering the Future , 1993 .

[62]  John M. Carroll,et al.  Scenarios and design cognition , 2002, Proceedings IEEE Joint International Conference on Requirements Engineering.

[63]  Jonathan Evans.  In two minds: dual-process accounts of reasoning , 2003, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[64]  Ashok K. Goel,et al.  Cognitive, collaborative, conceptual and creative - Four characteristics of the next generation of knowledge-based CAD systems: A study in biologically inspired design , 2012, Comput. Aided Des..

[65]  Thomas J. Howard,et al.  Describing the creative design process by the integration of engineering design and cognitive psychology literature , 2008 .

[66]  Jonathan Cagan,et al.  Fixation or inspiration? A meta-analytic review of the role of examples on design processes , 2015 .

[67]  T. Kuhn,et al.  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. , 1964 .

[68]  Bryan Lawson,et al.  How Designers Think , 1980 .

[69]  Brett Robertson,et al.  Creativity and the Use of CAD Tools: Lessons for Engineering Design Education From Industry , 2007 .

[70]  P. McLeod,et al.  Why good thoughts block better ones: The mechanism of the pernicious Einstellung (set) effect , 2008, Cognition.

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

[72]  Anna L. Cox,et al.  Analogies in design decision-making , 2009 .

[73]  Stephen Culley,et al.  Analysing creative behaviour in the later stage design process , 2013 .

[74]  Michael Joseph French,et al.  Conceptual Design for Engineers , 1985 .

[75]  P. Croskerry.  The Importance of Cognitive Errors in Diagnosis and Strategies to Minimize Them , 2003, Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges.

[76]  Sean Hanna,et al.  Automated Representation of Style by Feature Space Archetypes: Distinguishing Spatial Styles from Generative Rules , 2007 .

[77]  Luchins As.  Classroom experiments on mental set. , 1946 .

[78]  Steven M. Smith,et al.  Constraining effects of examples in a creative generation task , 1993, Memory & cognition.

[79]  A. Nerkar,et al.  Beyond local search: boundary‐spanning, exploration, and impact in the optical disk industry , 2001 .

[80]  Nathaniel Crilly,et al.  Fixation and creativity in concept development: the attitudes and practices of expert designers , 2015 .

[81]  Steven M. Smith.  The constraining effects of initial ideas. , 2003 .

[82]  Ashok K. Goel,et al.  Foraging for Inspiration: Understanding and Supporting the Online Information Seeking Practices of Biologically Inspired Designers , 2011 .

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

[84]  Claudia Eckert,et al.  REFERENCES TO PAST DESIGNS , 2005 .

[85]  Kathleen M. Eisenhardt,et al.  Theory Building From Cases: Opportunities And Challenges , 2007 .

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

[87]  M. Orne.  On the social psychology of the psychological experiment: With particular reference to demand characteristics and their implications. , 1962 .

[88]  P. McLeod,et al.  Inflexibility of experts—Reality or myth? Quantifying the Einstellung effect in chess masters , 2008, Cognitive Psychology.

[89]  Brian P. Bailey,et al.  Getting inspired!: understanding how and why examples are used in creative design practice , 2009, CHI.

[90]  Peter Lloyd,et al.  About: Designing , 2022 .

[91]  H. Rittel,et al.  Dilemmas in a general theory of planning , 1973 .

[92]  Amaresh Chakrabarti,et al.  A functional representation for aiding biomimetic and artificial inspiration of new ideas , 2005, Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing.

[93]  Doris Catharine Cornelie Knatz Kowaltowski,et al.  Methods that may stimulate creativity and their use in architectural design education , 2010 .

[94]  Luis A. Vasconcelos,et al.  Research data supporting "Fluency results in design fixation experiments: an additional explanation" , 2016 .

[95]  R. Sternberg,et al.  Recognizing, defining, and representing problems. , 2003 .

[96]  Barry Schwartz,et al.  Reinforcement-Induced Behavioral Stereotypy: How Not To Teach People To Discover Rules , 1982 .

[97]  A. Luchins.  Classroom experiments on mental set. , 1946, The American journal of psychology.

[98]  Nathan Crilly,et al.  Information and interaction requirements for software tools supporting analogical design , 2015, Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing.

[99]  Shari Lawrence Pfleeger,et al.  Preliminary Guidelines for Empirical Research in Software Engineering , 2002, IEEE Trans. Software Eng..

[100]  Kevin S. Berbaum,et al.  Missed fractures resulting from satisfaction of search effect , 1994, Emergency Radiology.

[101]  Valerie J. Caracelli,et al.  Toward a Conceptual Framework for Mixed-Method Evaluation Designs , 1989 .

[102]  John S. Gero,et al.  Design Prototypes: A Knowledge Representation Schema for Design , 1990, AI Mag..

[103]  Carey K. Morewedge,et al.  Debiasing Decisions , 2015 .

[104]  Kees Dorst,et al.  Briefing and reframing: A situated practice , 2011 .

[105]  Gabriela Goldschmidt.  Serial sketching: visual problem solving in designing , 1992 .

[106]  Harold W. Thimbleby,et al.  Human factors and missed solutions to Enigma design weaknesses , 2016, Cryptologia.

[107]  Melissa A. B. Smith,et al.  Shifting the Focus: An Objective Look at Design Fixation , 2013, HCI.

[108]  Willie van Peer,et al.  Scientific Methods for the Humanities , 2012 .

[109]  Ellen Yi-Luen Do,et al.  Extended linkography and distance graph in design evaluation: an empirical study of the dual effects of inspiration sources in creative design , 2010 .

[110]  K. Dodge,et al.  Social cognitive biases and deficits in aggressive boys. , 1982, Child development.

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

[112]  J. Metcalfe.  Premonitions of insight predict impending error. , 1986 .

[113]  Ashok K. Goel,et al.  Case-based design support: a case study in architectural design , 1992, IEEE Expert.

[114]  John S. Gero,et al.  Acquiring information from linkography in protocol studies of designing , 2008 .

[115]  Julie S. Linsey,et al.  The effects of time and incubation on design concept generation , 2014 .

[116]  M. Runco,et al.  The Standard Definition of Creativity , 2012 .

[117]  H. Arkes,et al.  The Psychology of Sunk Cost , 1985 .

[118]  Maria C. Yang,et al.  Fundamental studies in Design-by-Analogy: A focus on domain-knowledge experts and applications to transactional design problems , 2014 .

[119]  Jane Darke,et al.  The primary Generator and the Design Process , 1979 .

[120]  nominatif de l’habitat,et al.  Definitions , 1964, Innovation Dynamics and Policy in the Energy Sector.

[121]  Linda Candy,et al.  Creative design of the Lotus bicycle: implications for knowledge support systems research , 1996 .

[122]  John Paul Minda,et al.  The Psychology of Thinking , 2015 .

[123]  L. H. Shu,et al.  A natural-language approach to biomimetic design , 2010, Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing.

[124]  Herbert A. Simon,et al.  The Sciences of the Artificial , 1970 .

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

[126]  Andrew Peter Wallace McCarthy.  E DITOR ’ S C OMMENTS Diversity of Design Science Research , 2022 .

[127]  Steffen Moritz,et al.  Cognitive Biases Questionnaire for Psychosis , 2013 .

[128]  Rob H. Bracewell,et al.  Capturing design rationale , 2009, Comput. Aided Des..