The neural correlates of ideation in product design engineering practitioners

L. Hay,S. J. Gilbert,G. Campbell,D. Coyle,M. A. Grealy,A. H. B. Duffy,L. Lyall

doi:10.1017/dsj.2019.27

Abstract

In product design engineering (PDE), ideation involves the generation of technical behaviours and physical structures to address specific functional requirements. This differs from generic creative ideation tasks, which emphasise functional and technical considerations less. To advance knowledge about the neural basis of PDE ideation, we present the first fMRI study on professional product design engineers practising in industry. We aimed to explore brain activation during ideation, and compare activation in open-ended and constrained tasks. Imagery manipulation tasks were contrasted with ideation tasks in a sample of 29 PDE professionals. The key findings were: (1) PDE ideation is associated with greater activity in left cingulate gyrus; (2) there were no significant differences between open-ended and constrained tasks; and (3) a preliminary association with activity in the right superior temporal gyrus was also observed. The results are consistent with existing fMRI work on generic creative ideation, suggesting that PDE ideation may share a number of similarities at the neural level. Future work includes: functional connectivity analysis of open-ended and constrained ideation to further investigate potential differences; investigating the effects of aspects of design expertise/training on processing; and the use of novelty measures directly linked to the designer’s internal processing in fMRI analysis.

Highlights

Product design engineering (PDE) refers to the set of tasks involved in conceptualising, developing, and realising functional products (Pugh 1991)
It is not clear from existing cognitive neuroscience work whether these vary across domains, or if there is some common neural basis underpinning different creative ideation tasks
There are considerable differences between PDE ideation and the generic divergent thinking tasks typically studied in cognitive neuroscience

Summary

Introduction

Product design engineering (PDE) refers to the set of tasks involved in conceptualising, developing, and realising functional products (Pugh 1991). It may be viewed as a key domain of human creative activity, and is critical for meeting human needs and advancing technology across numerous sectors of society (Sosa & Gero 2005). Fundamental to the PDE process is creative ideation, which may be generally defined as the generation of ideas to address a given brief or problem. Numerous studies of creative ideation in the general population have been conducted in cognitive neuroscience, typically employing generic divergent thinking tasks such as the Alternative Uses Task (Benedek et al 2018)

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