Mitigating Fixation in Creative Process by Using Patent Data Tool as Stimuli

In the early conceptual stage of design, novice designers and professionals experience different levels of fixation. Design tools and workflows can support designers to explore creative opportunities. Patent data tool for engineering design purposes is one example, using the design-by-analogy method to facilitate divergent ideation. This work...

Towards constructive design feedback dialogues: guiding peer and client feedback to stimulate children’s creative thinking

Design feedback is an essential pedagogical tool that can help young novice designers navigate divergent and convergent paths while designing. However, design feedback is often met with resistance, which counteracts its potential to help novice designers evaluate their design and generate new solution directions. In this paper, we report on...

Uncovering early indicators of fixation during the concept development stage of children’s design processes

In this paper, we explore the early indicators of design fixation occurring during the concept development stage of children’s design processes. This type of fixation, which we named: concept fixation, causes a blind adherence to the current (possibly unfavourable) state of a design idea. Its occurrence hampers the creative thinking processes...

Effects of Convergent and Divergent Feedback on Creative Thinking During Children’s Design Processes

This paper explores patterns in the feedback preceding instances of design fixation in children (age 9 to 11) carrying out a co-design project. Our goal is to find ways to improve the early mastering of their divergent (DT) and convergent thinking (CT) skills, which in turn will help the children to develop their creative abilities. Previous...

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...

Presenting partial pictures of product examples in styling tasks: A new way to inspire designers without fixations

In contemporary markets, styling becomes increasingly important for companies to stand out among competitors. Designers take the primary role of styling. Currently, designers are lack of objective tools to styling. They largely rely on their experience and intuitions to styling. To support designers to styling, this study firstly investigates...