Abstract
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 disciplines. This would allow fixation research to broaden and strengthen its methodological approaches, offering richer insights into how design ideas originate and how they subsequently evolve. Such knowledge could then be applied to influence the development of design education, training and tools. In this way, fixation research would maximize its potential to provide insights into the creative process, improve design practice and thereby support innovation.
Highlights
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
To permit a wide-ranging exploration of design fixation, we here propose a working definition that does not require the effects to be negative, as that judgement would, in any case, be a matter of perspective; we propose a definition that is inclusive of many different kinds of design activity, many different sources of bias and many different consequences of that bias: design fixation is a state in which someone engaged in a design task undertakes a restricted exploration of the design space due to an unconscious bias resulting from prior experiences, knowledge or assumptions
How can researchers evaluate the role of individual differences in design fixation? What is the effect of different cognitive styles and processes? What is the effect of different personality variables? Can we identify individual characteristics that might predict fixation results? Design context
Summary
Participants were invited to attend the event on the basis of their prior work on fixation, inspiration and creativity, or on the basis of their conceptual, methodological and practice-based expertise. The participants are listed on the title page. They self-identified as having expertise in the following areas: various branches of design, including engineering design, complex design, industrial design, fashion design and architecture, with special attention to design creativity, design fixation, inspiration in design, design cognition, design reasoning, design philosophy, design methodology, design processes, design models; various branches of psychology, including cognitive psychology, human factors psychology, health psychology and design psychology, with special attention to human mind and memory processes, problem solving, planning, expertise, habits and goals. The group brought diverse perspectives to the discussion, allowing us to capture the history, development and state of the art in fixation research, survey the relevance of other disciplines and probe possible future directions
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