Idea Fixation in Design: The In uence of Pictures and Words
Year: 2009
Editor: Chakrabarti, A.
Author: Cardoso,Carlos; Badke-Schaub,Petra
Section: Creativity, Synthesis and Innovation
Page(s): 51-58
Abstract
During design problem solving designers often search for support in external sources of information, such as pictures, written descriptions and physical examples of available solutions. While devising new concepts designers sometimes become too attached to particular ideas, either developed by them or induced by external precedents. Inadequate adoption of features and principles from other existing solutions has been described as design xation. These issues have been discussed as having an impact on design creativity and innovation. The study presented here investigated the in uence pictorial and written representations, of a particular solution,had upon a group of industrial design students addressing a design problem. The results clearly demonstrate the presence of xation with the participants exposed to the pictorial example, but not to the written material.Reasons for such discrepancy are discussed and examined in terms of the implications it might place upon designers' inclination to favour speci c sources of information
Keywords: Design Fixation, Pictorial, and Written Representations