Exposure Effects in Design Idea Generation: Unconscious Conformity or a Product of Sampling Probability?

The process of idea generation in engineering design is sensitive to many internal and external factors. External representations, such as previous designs, are often issued to designers to strive creativity and productivity through cognitive stimulation. However, past research has shown that examples may cause a negative effect known as design fixation, which limits the diversity of idea production. In this paper, we highlight two opposing explanations for why examples limit the diversity of idea generation, which are that designers unconsciously conform to examples or that examples exhaust the pool of possible solutions before the search has begun. We provide a critical review of theory and empirical research on effects of examples, and present a study that combines several methods of behavioural analysis to illustrate the effect of examples in the idea generation process of sixteen senior students of mechanical engineering. The discussion reflects the findings of the study to the existing body of evidence concerning exposure effects in design idea generation.