Design Fixation Research Articles

Instrumental and Conventional Interpretations of Behavior Are Associated With Distinct Outcomes in Early Childhood.

Four tasks (N = 191, 3- to 6-year-olds) examined the effect of instrumental versus conventional language cues on children's imitative fidelity of a necklace-making activity, their memory and transmission of the activity, and their perceptions of functional fixedness. Children in the conventional condition imitated with higher fidelity, transmitted more of the modeled behavior, and showed higher levels of functional fixedness than children in the instrumental condition. There were no differences in children's memory of the activity between conditions demonstrating that memory alone does not explain differences in imitative fidelity. The data demonstrate that children's interpretation of behavior as instrumental or conventional has wide-ranging implications for what children imitate, what they transmit to others, and how they reason about objects' functions.

The effects of representation on idea generation and design fixation: A study comparing sketches and function trees

Representations in engineering design can be hand sketches, photographs, CAD, functional models, physical models, or text. Using representations allows engineers to gain a clearer picture of how a design works. We present an experiment that compares the influence of representations on fixation and creativity. This experiment presents designers with an example solution represented as a function tree and a sketch, we compare how these different external representations influence design fixation as they complete a design task. Results show that function trees do not cause fixation to ideas compared to a control group, and that function trees reduce fixation when compared to sketches. Results from this experiment show that function tree representations offer advantages for reducing fixation during idea generation.

Design Fixation: A Comparison between Native and Foreign Domains

Design fixation negatively impacts design outcomes and is generally referred as the designer's inability to consider multiple strategies to formulate and solve a design need. The present paper will assess some of the design skills of Indian engineering students viz. fluency, flexibility and originality. To evaluate these skills, a more general task of designing a disposable spill-proof coffee cup is given to the sample. The sample consisted of students from native domain (Mechanical and Civil engineering departments) and foreign domain (other than the mentioned departments). The results were discussed with reference to the level of fixation of students of native and foreign domains, while providing two different kinds of environments, one with a specified sample example and other with a design pattern.

Creating When You Have Less: The Impact of Resource Scarcity on Product Use Creativity

This research examines how a general sense of resource availability influences consumers’ product use creativity. The authors propose and demonstrate that the salience of resource scarcity versus abundance enhances the novelty of product use solutions in independent consumption environments. An investigation of the underlying process finds that scarcity salience activates a constraint mindset that persists and manifests itself through reduced functional fixedness in subsequent product usage contexts (i.e., makes consumers think beyond the traditional functionality of a given product), consequently enhancing product use creativity. This work advances the extant creativity literature, currently limited to examining the effects of context-specific resource constraints, by establishing a context-independent linkage between resource availability and product use creativity. Furthermore, this research contributes to the scarcity literature, which has primarily focused on investigating the quantity and frequency of consumption, by examining the impact of scarcity on the quality of consumption solutions.

Three methods for identifying novel affordances

AbstractWe describe three approaches to identify novel product affordances: affordance of absence; insights from lead users, specifically do-it-yourselfers (DIYers); and natural-language searches. While these approaches were separately pursued, we show their connection to each other in this paper. We begin by describing the affordance of absence, inspired by insights on affordances arising from a lack of resources. For example, in the absence of specialized tools, more general tools are used to accomplish similar tasks. Such absence clarifies how other tools could be modified to add relevant features and identifies critical features of the absent tool. In addition, the temporary removal of physical features and objects enables user interaction in ways that may not emerge in their presence. Affordance of absence has the potential to more fully specify affordances for a given object and to help overcome functional fixedness. For the second approach, we describe insights from DIYers obtained from the “IKEA hackers” online community. We consider DIYers lead users for seeking out and exploiting product affordances, often transforming product functions dramatically. We also discuss their projects through the lens of affordance of absence. For the third approach, we outline our natural-language approach to affordance extraction, beginning with consumer product reviews provided for Canadian Tire, a major Canadian retailer. We describe efforts toward automatically identifying less common affordances, and the use of cue phrases to highlight insightful DIY transformations from the IKEA hackers community. Finally, we comment on the potential value of this work for product design in general.

Analysis of Divergent Thinking in Indian Engineering Students

Divergent thinking (DT) is one of the design skills which helps in generation of alternative design solutions for any given design task and is very much essential for addressing a design problem. Hence, an attempt has been made to evaluate the DT skills of Indian engineering students. The level of design fixation is also determined. The methodology of the work carried out to estimate and analyze DT skills and the results obtained are discussed in detail. The results throw light on the design skills of Indian engineering students, which perhaps help in the development of effective teaching methods.

Improving Students' Functional Modeling Skills: A Modeling Approach and a Scoring Rubric

An engineering design curriculum that introduces functional modeling methods is believed to enhance the ability to abstract complex systems, assist during the concept generation phase of design, and reduce design fixation. To that end, a variety of techniques for considering function during design have been proposed in the literature, yet there are a lack of validated approaches for teaching students to generate functional models and no reliable method for the assessment of functional models. This paper presents a study investigating students' ability to generate functional models during a homework assignment; the study includes three different treatment conditions: (1) students who receive only a lecture on functional modeling, (2) students who receive a lecture on functional modeling as well as a step-by-step example, and (3) students who receive a lecture, a step-by-step example, and an algorithmic approach with grammar rules. The experiment was conducted in a cornerstone, undergraduate engineering design course, and consequently, was the students' first exposure to functional modeling. To assess student generated functional models across all three conditions, an 18 question functional model scoring rubric was developed based on flow-based functional modeling standards. Use of the rubric to assess the student generated functional models resulted in high inter-rater agreement for total score. Results show that students receiving the step-by-step example perform as well as students receiving the step-by-step example and an algorithmic approach with grammar rules; both groups perform better than the lecture-only group.

Representing analogies to influence fixation and creativity: A study comparing computer-aided design, photographs, and sketches

AbstractMany tools are being developed to assist designers in retrieving analogies. One critical question these designers face is how these analogues should be represented in order to minimize design fixation and maximize idea generation. To address this question, an experiment is presented that compares various representations' influence on creativity and design fixation. This experiment presents an effective example (analogue) as computer-aided design (CAD), sketch, or photograph representations. We found that all representations induced fixation, and the degree of fixation did not vary significantly. We also found that CAD representations encourage engineering designers to identify and copy the key effective features of the example. CAD and photo representations also produced a higher quality of design concepts. Results from this experiment offer insights into how these various representations may be used in examples during idea generation; CAD representations appear to offer the greatest advantages during the idea generation process. The results from this experiment also indicate that analogical databases of effective design examples should include CAD and photolike images of the analogue rather than sketches.

Fixation and creativity in concept development: The attitudes and practices of expert designers

Interviews were conducted with thirteen professional designers to understand their attitudes towards fixation and the practices they adopt to address it. Fixation was thought to be encouraged and discouraged by a wide range of factors related to the project, the client, the design team, the organisational culture and the design activities employed. The experiences that designers accumulate during their professional lives were associated with fixation in different ways. The experience of prior design failures was thought to encourage fixation whilst the experience of varied solutions was thought to discourage fixation. Recognising fixation episodes and reflecting on them was described as the means by which designers could guard against such episodes in the future and thus be more creative. • Interview study with expert designers. • Design fixation is a real problem in professional practice. • Designers are aware of fixation and take steps to address it. • Fixation is influenced by a wide range of contextual factors. • Reflecting on fixation helps designers to guard against it.

Hetero Expert Innovation: New Product Development through Exploitation of Ideas from Other Industries

OVERVIEW:In order to compete effectively in the fast-moving consumer goods industry, companies must find untapped sources for new product ideas. Experts in other industries may provide a source of novel ideas, helping companies to overcome functional fixedness and not-invented-here syndrome, which can be obstacles in conventional new product development processes. Based on direct observation of participants in a new product development project at a fast-moving consumer goods company, we explore the process of hetero expert innovation, which incorporates input from expert users from other industries into the new product development process. The process described in this article may offer an effective alternative to traditional idea generation processes for new product development.

Functional fixedness: The functional significance of delayed disengagement based on attention set.

During search, the disengagement of attention is automatically delayed when a fixated but task-irrelevant object shares features of the search target. We examined whether delayed disengagement based on top-down attention set is potentially functional, resulting in additional processing of the fixated item. To accomplish this, we adapted the oculomotor disengagement paradigm. Participants saccaded to a peripheral object of a particular color and responded to the identity of the letter within it. To initiate search participants made a saccade away from an always irrelevant object at the center of the screen that matched or mismatched the target's color and contained a letter that was congruent or incongruent with the target letter. We found that delayed disengagement based on attention set was associated with deeper processing of the center item: a congruency effect between the center letter and peripheral target letter was only observed when the center object's color matched participants' attention set. Results are consistent with the proposal that delayed disengagement based on attention set is functionally significant, automatically encouraging deeper levels of processing of target-like objects that fall within the focus of attention.

Application of TRIZ in Improving the Creativity of Engineering Experts

Numerous researchers have extensively studied two causes of problem solvers’ inflexibility which impede creativity: the Einstellung effect [1] and design fixation [2]. The former has been demonstrated experimentally on numerous occasions and is induced by prior experience. The latter is a result of our fixedness on the functions of things which we regularly use. This paper focuses on the third cause of inflexibility, which has not been researched adequately – the detrimental effect of professional expertise on creativity [3]. This detrimental effect is a natural consequence of extensive professional experience and the possession of large amounts of domain knowledge. After approximately 10 years in a profession, due to the construction of effective knowledge schemas, the short-term memory limitations which normally impede effective idea generation can partly or even completely disappear. As a result, experts attain an ability to search for solutions to problems quickly – without significant cognitive and time effort. Although this ‘quickness’ of experts in suggesting solutions is advantageous, it also creates negative consequences. Experts’ solutions are usually confined to their domain-specific knowledge and do not utilize novel ideas. This study reviews existing evidence related to the detrimental influence of expertise on creativity and discusses how the application of TRIZ tools of Substance-Field Analysis and Method of the Ideal Result can minimize this negative influence.

Analysis of endodontist posture utilizing cinemetry, surface electromyography and ergonomic checklists.

The postural risk factors for dentists include the ease of vision in the workplace, cold, vibration and mechanical pressure in tissues, incorrect posture, functional fixity, cognitive requirements and work-related organizational and psychosocial factors. The objective was to analyze the posture of endodontists at the workplace. Eighteen right-handed endodontists aged 25 to 60 years (34±3) participated in the study. Electromyography, kinemetry, ergonomic scales (RULA and Couto's checklist) and biophotogrammetry were used to analyze the posture of endodontists during root canal treatment of the maxillary right first and second molars using rotary and manual instrumentation. The variations observed in the electromyographic activities during the performance of rotary and manual techniques suggest that the fibers of the longissimus region, anterior and medium deltoid, medium trapezium, biceps, triceps brachii, brachioradialis and short thumb abductor muscles underwent adaptations to provide more accurate functional movements. Computerized kinemetry and biophotogrammetry showed that, as far as posture is concerned, rotary technique was more demanding than the manual technique. In conclusion, the group of endodontists evaluated in this study exhibited posture disorders regardless of whether the rotary or manual technique was used.

DETERMINANTS OF USER INNOVATOR BEHAVIOUR IN THE SILVER MARKET

The existing research on the behaviour of user innovators has focused almost exclusively on younger users. In light of the demographic shift and the increasing importance of the "Silver Market" segment (customers 55 years plus), we analysed whether important determinants of user innovator behaviour (use experience, product knowledge, technical expertise, and the lead user components) exert the same influence among older users. We conducted a study in the camping and caravanning industry and included 333 respondents from 19 to 86 years of age. The innovator share among older users was slightly lower (43% versus 57%). While use experience and product knowledge turned out less important for older users in our sample, technical expertise materialised as the most important determinant. Additionally, being ahead of trend is stronger related to dissatisfaction with existing products among older users. We found additional evidence that users with high use experience suffer from functional fixedness.

Spanning the complexity chasm: A research approach to move from simple to complex engineering systems

AbstractA multistudy approach is presented that allows design thinking of complex systems to be studied by triangulating causal controlled lab findings with coded data from more complex products. A case study illustration of this approach is provided. During the conceptual design of engineering systems, designers face many cognitive challenges, including design fixation, errors in their mental models, and the sunk cost effect. These factors need to be mitigated for the generation of effective ideas. Understanding the effects of these challenges in a realistic and complex engineering system is especially difficult due to a variety of factors influencing the results. Studying the design of such systems in a controlled environment is extremely challenging because of the scale and complexity of such systems and the time needed to design the systems. Considering these challenges, a mixed-method approach is presented for studying the design thinking of complex engineering systems. This approach includes a controlled experiment with a simple system and a qualitative cognitive-artifacts study on more complex engineering systems followed by the triangulation of results. The triangulated results provide more generalizable information for complex system design thinking. This method combines the advantages of quantitative and qualitative study methods, making them more powerful while studying complex engineering systems. The proposed method is illustrated further using an illustrative study on the cognitive effects of physical models during the design of engineering systems.

Functional Fixedness: The Functional Significance of Delayed Attentional Disengagement Based on Attention Sets

Functional Fixedness: The Functional Significance of Delayed Attentional Disengagement Based on Attention Sets

The Influence of Expertise upon the Designer's Approach to Studio Practice and Tool Use

ABSTRACTIndustrial design is characterized by the embodiment of design intentions. From conceptualization through to design specification, the designer employs a variety of design tools to externalize and develop design solutions to often ill-defined design problems. Surveys of student and practicing designers synthesise existing theoretical and empirical studies of design practice to analyse designer attitudes towards tool use and effectiveness. The survey studies illustrate the influence of expertise upon the designer's attitudes towards tool use during studio practice. Results indicate a relationship between limited experience and the designer's perceptions of and approaches to iterative exploration and design divergence. The use of certain designerly tools appear to compound a tendency for design convergence and fixation.

Design fixation: Classifications and modern methods of prevention

AbstractThe termdesign fixationis often used interchangeably to refer to situations where designers limit their creative output because of an overreliance on features of preexisting designs, or more generally, an overreliance on a specific body of knowledge directly associated with a problem. In this paper, we argue that interdisciplinary interest in design fixation has led to increasingly broad definitions of the phenomenon that may be undermining empirical research efforts, educational efforts to minimize fixation, and the acquisition and dissemination of transdisciplinary knowledge about fixation effects. To address these issues, we recommend that researchers consider categorizing fixation phenomena into one of three classifications: unconscious adherence to the influence of prior designs, conscious blocks to change, and intentional resistance to new ideas. Next, we distinguish between concept-based design fixation, fixation to a specific class of known design concepts, and knowledge-based design fixation, fixation to a problem-specific knowledge base. With these distinctions in place, we propose a system of orders of design fixation, recommend methods for reducing fixation in inventive design, and recommend areas that are in need of further research within the field of design science.

Psychological limits on animal innovation

Innovation is a way by which animals adopt a new behaviour or apply a current behaviour to a novel situation. Although exploring a new behaviour is itself risky for the animal, a growing body of research indicates that it is fairly widespread across animal species. While there have been explorations of when innovation is most likely and which individuals are most likely to innovate, less has been explored about the psychological mechanisms underlying innovation. Here we consider some psychological limits on innovation. We focus on five factors that my limit the invention of novel behaviours (neophobia, conservatism, conformity, functional fixedness and the endowment effect). The feature common to each of these is that individuals tend to stick with existing behaviours, or the existing uses of those behaviours, rather than exploring novel options. This in turn limits animals' willingness to try less common behaviours unless they are forced through circumstances to explore alternate strategies. Despite the similar functional outcomes, it is critical to understand the underlying mechanisms present in different situations in order to make strong predictions about when innovation is, or is not, expected to emerge. We then consider how transmission biases and social learning mechanisms influence and limit the spread of inventions among individuals. Of course, these ‘limits’ are beneficial in other circumstances, and throughout this review we consider the trade-offs for these psychological mechanisms.

An Experimental Investigation of the Effectiveness of Empathic Experience Design for Innovative Concept Generation

An important part of designing successful products is building empathy for the people for whom the product is intended. Despite recent interest in empathic design techniques, they remain confined primarily to customer needs analysis and design problem definition activities, and much of the evidence for their impact on engineering designs is anecdotal. In this paper, empathic design techniques are formally integrated into the conceptual design process, and their effectiveness is investigated with a controlled idea generation experiment. Empathic experience design (EED) is a structured conceptual design method focused on stimulating creative, user-centered concept generation by engaging designers in empathic experiences as part of concept generation. Empathic experiences are demanding product interaction tasks that are intended to help a design engineer empathize with customers who use a product under a variety of sometimes challenging conditions. Empathic experiences can represent either actual disabilities or situational disabilities, which are experienced by lead users who push a product to its extremes and experience needs prior to the general population. In some cases, these empathic experiences amplify the situational disability as a means of highlighting the challenges of interacting with a particular product or system. A representative example is the use of thick gloves to limit a designer's dexterity and thereby highlight the challenges associated with either actual disabilities, such as arthritis, or situational disabilities, such as extreme cold or fatigue that make it difficult to move one's fingers freely. The EED method precedes concept generation activities with a series of these empathic experiences involving a baseline product to be redesigned. Many professional designers incorporate empathy and empathic experiences into their design practices, but evidence of their impact on resulting designs has been largely anecdotal. In this paper, their effectiveness is investigated formally with strategically designed experiments. The research hypothesis is that empathic experiences, when coupled with concept generation activities, lead to designs that are more original, especially with respect to features that enhance product-user interactions. To test this hypothesis, experiments were conducted on two example problems in which participants were asked to develop concepts for a next-generation product. Experimental groups completed a controlled concept generation task after engaging in empathic experiences with a prototype product to be redesigned. Control groups completed an identical concept generation task after interacting with the prototype products freely. Resulting concepts were analyzed for their originality, technical feasibility, and embodiment of a specific set of innovation characteristics. Results indicate that the experimental participants who were exposed to empathic experiences prior to concept generation produced concepts with significantly higher rates of original product-user interaction features without any sacrifice in technical feasibility. The overall originality of the concepts is also higher for redesign problems with an abundance of existing solutions, indicating that the EED method also helps alleviate design fixation.