UNDERSTANDING FIXATION: A STUDY ON THE ROLE OF EXPERTISE
Year: 2011
Editor: Culley, S.J.; Hicks, B.J.; McAloone, T.C.; Howard, T.J. & Badke-Schaub, P.
Author: Viswanathan, Vimal; Linsey, Julie
Series: ICED
Section: Human Behaviour in Design
Page(s): 309-319
Abstract
Engineering idea generation plays a vital role in developing new products. Recent research has focused on methods to make designers more innovative and creative. Design fixation imposes a major constraint in this regard. This paper analyzes how design experience influences design fixation. This paper hypothesizes that people store more and more mental models into the set in their memory as they gain experience in creative design problem solving, and the extent of this set provides for both a greater set of solutions to draw from resulting in more ideas and may determine the extent to which they are fixated. A controlled laboratory experiment replicates the environment described in the study by Linsey et al. [1] with novices rather than experts, and compares the results to this prior study. The results support the increased number of ideas hypothesis but not the reduced fixation. It is observed that experts created significantly more ideas but also fixate more. Although the experts fixated on the example, they still outperform novices. This sheds light on the importance of a more practical-oriented approach in engineering curricula.
Keywords: OPEN-ENDED PROBLEMS; EXPERTISE; ENGINEERING EDUCATION; DESIGN FIXATION; CREATIVITY