With the Head in the Clouds: Daydreaming as a Mindset that facilitates Creative Incubation

With the Head in the Clouds: Daydreaming as a Mindset that facilitates Creative Incubation

Schmidt, L.

Schoormans, J. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Product Innovation Management

Master of Science Strategic Product Design

2014-12-19

This thesis proposes a new method to enhance designers’ creative performance. Applying the unconscious work theory of incubation effects, this thesis proposes that daydreaming during idea incubation could result in more novel and useful ideas by fostering unconscious associative processes. Building on previous findings by Baird et al (2012), who had found that engaging in an undemanding task during incubation could lead to a subsequent increase in performance on a divergent thinking task, this thesis aims at investigating whether similar effects could be found when solving a more complex creative task, like a design assignment. An experiment conducted with 85 design students tested whether daydreaming induced by a cognitively undemanding task during idea incubation, as compared to engaging in a demanding task, rest or no break, could lead to subsequent increased creative performance on the design task. Creative performance was assessed based on the ideas generated to solve the design assignment, rated for creativity using objective measures as well as market acceptance evaluations by a potential consumer group. Results showed that while there were no differences between groups based on the objective measures, the potential target group rated product concepts created by participants who had engaged in the undemanding task during idea incubation to be of higher quality and to elicit less negative emotions. Participants in this condition had reported a higher frequency of daydreaming-related thoughts than participants in the demanding task condition and the no-break condition, and less task-related thoughts than participants in the rest condition. These results indicate that while there was no clear indication for a higher degree of creativity in the ideas generated after a daydreaming-incubation, the concepts must convey some sort of additional value for the target consumer. It was concluded that daydreaming during idea incubation could increase creative performance on a design task when a global definition of creative performance was applied. A post-test investigated how the effectiveness of a daydreaming-incubation period could be maximized. Building on Klinger’s findings (1990) that daydreaming episodes could be facilitated by exposure to relevant triggers, symbolic images were tested for their effectiveness in triggering daydreaming-related thoughts and emotions. Strikingly, a high positive correlation was found between the elicitation of daydreamingrelated thoughts and positive emotions. This finding indicates that the same triggers that facilitate daydreaming might also elicit positive emotions. The results therefore seem to be in contradiction with previous findings that related daydreaming to negative emotions. It was concluded that the symbols used in the test could be beneficial for creative performance in two ways: (1) by facilitating creative performance due to their ability to trigger daydreaming and (2) by supporting creativity in general through eliciting positive emotions. The thesis closes with a proposal of how to use the chosen set of symbolic images to be beneficial for creativity in the form of daydreaming triggers and mood changers and with an outlook on open issues to be addressed by further research.

daydreaming
incubation
idea generation
research
design

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:45499fbd-733c-432b-857c-b1a6aa8bd078

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2014 Schmidt, L.