Design fixation experiments often report that participants exposed to an example solution generate fewer ideas than those who were not. This reduced ‘idea fluency’ is generally explained as participants’ creativity being constrained by the example they have seen. However, the inclusion of an example also introduces other factors that might affect idea fluency in the experiments. We here offer an additional explanation for these results: participants not exposed to the example tend to generate ideas with little elaboration, while the level of detail in the example encourages a similar level of elaboration among stimulated participants. Because idea elaboration is time consuming, non-stimulated participants record more ideas overall. We investigated this hypothesis by reanalyzing data from three different studies; in two of them we found that non-stimulated participants generated more ideas and more ideas containing only text, whilst stimulated participants generated ideas that were more elaborated. Based on the creativity literature, we provide several explanations for the differences in results found across studies. Our findings and explanations have implications for the interpretation of creativity experiments reported to date and for the design of future studies@en

When tackling problems, designers might be inspired by different sources, whether concrete or abstract. The more concrete sources often comprise representations of potential solutions or examples of existing designs. The more abstract sources often represent the desirable properties of engineered systems, such as modular system architectures. We performed an experiment with 60 novice designers to compare the inspiration effects from these two types of stimuli. Participants were asked to solve a design problem, having been exposed to a concrete example design, an abstract system property, both, or no stimulus at all. Their design work was assessed according to four metrics: fluency, diversity, commonness, and conformity. Exposure to either the example design or the system property reduced the fluency and diversity of ideas, and exposure to both stimuli reduced these measures even further. While there was no difference in the inspiration effects from the example and the property in terms of fluency, diversity, and commonness; results for conformity showed that each stimulus constrained participants differently: encouraging ideas similar to one type of stimulus, while discouraging ideas similar to the other type. In combination with other work on inspiration and fixation, these findings can help shape how design is taught and how inspiration tools are developed.@en

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.

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Theory and discourse suggest that the aesthetic appreciation of a wide range of artifacts - including works of art and consumer products - is partially governed by the principle of maximum effect for minimum means. We conducted two studies to find experimental evidence of this principle in the context of product design. In Study 1, we tested the hypothesis that the aesthetic appreciation of a product would be positively affected by the perception of the product as the minimum means achieving the maximum effect. Encouraged by the results of this study, we conducted Study 2 to test again the principle of maximum effect for minimum means using a more controlled experimental design. Our findings provide support for our hypothesis, indicating that the aesthetic appreciation of a product depends, to some extent, on the perception that the product achieves more than other products from its category by making an efficient use of resources.

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The aesthetic judgment of an artifact is usually interpreted as an assessment of the artifact's sensory properties. But an artifact can also be appreciated, and still aesthetically, for the way it fulfills its purpose. Existing design theory does not provide the concepts required for describing this aspect of aesthetic appreciation and so cannot fully explain what people mean when they say a product is beautiful. In this paper, we develop an understanding of the aesthetic judgment based on the principle of maximum effect for minimum means. We explain how a means–effect relationship can be established between a product and its purpose or effect, and how the product and the effect can be perceived to be minimal and maximal. We also explain how the appreciation of this relationship depends on a set of assumed alternatives for both the product or means and the effect. Finally, we provide some directions for future research into design aesthetics.@en

The ability to perform the instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs) is an important focus for the promotion of independent living in old age. If strategies to enable older people to remain in their own homes are to be developed, advances must be made in understanding the demands associated with IADLs. This paper reports on a study of how activity demands - the body postures, actions and hand functions involved in cooking, housework, laundering and shopping - relate to the capabilities of a sample of older people in Great Britain. Task data were analysed for 4,886 community-dwelling 55-93-year-olds who were enrolled in a follow-up survey to the 1996/97 Family Resources Survey. Logistic regression models were used to calculate adjusted odds ratios for associations between functional limitations and IADL difficulty. Attributable fraction estimates were also used to assess the population impact of the functional limitations. Comparable effect sizes were observed across activities for limitations in body postures (standing, reaching and bending/stooping), actions (lifting/lowering and holding/carrying) and hand functions. Most of the difficulties were attributable to limitations in body postures, primarily bending/stooping, whereas actions and hand functions accounted for much less difficulty. We present a matrix of the potential impact that design changes to alleviate each limitation would have on the ability to perform the activities studied. This can help to prioritise interventions aimed at supporting continued independent living.@en

The world population is ageing. At both the individual and collective levels, ageing causes several changes in people's lives that influence their needs and the way in which they interact with products. This chapter aims first, to provide a literature review on different aspects of ageing in order to better understand how people will respond to products as they grow older. Second, it describes how the physical and cognitive decline of older users increases rather than decreases the need to focus on all aspects of their experience, including their physical, sensory, cognitive and affective responses. Having considered these issues, suggestions are made in order that designers might best focus their attention as they design for a population that is rapidly ageing, and where members of that population are encouraged to maintain full participation in society.@en

Based on a series of interviews with practicing industrial designers, a framework is developed that represents designers as holding distinct intentions for how product visual form should be interpreted by consumers (e.g. perceived qualities). These intentions are driven by various motivating factors (e.g. the brand) and constrained by other factors (e.g. production costs). Designers seek to resolve these competing factors by referring to a broad range of visual sources (e.g. existing products), and by constructing visual representations (e.g. sketches) that describe the planned form for the product. Despite designers' efforts to specify the product's form, the eventual form may be outside their control because still other factors (e.g. manufacturing tolerances) modify the design in unanticipated ways.

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Objective: Patterns of capability loss and disability onset among older people were investigated prospectively. Background: With aging, the gap between personal capability and environmental demand becomes wider, resulting in higher levels of disability in daily activities. Methods: Data from a longitudinal, population-based study were obtained for analysis, which recruited a representative sample of 13,004 people aged 65 years and older from five sites in Great Britain. Participants completed a baseline interview during 1990 to 1994 and follow-up interviews after 1, 2, 3, 6, 8, and 10 years. Those who reported full vision, hearing, thinking, locomotion, reaching, and dexterity ability as well as no disability in cooking, housework, shopping, and transportation at baseline were included in a survival analysis. Results: Locomotion was the first ability to be lost, followed by reaching, thinking, hearing, vision, and dexterity. Age at onset of disability was earliest for shopping, then housework, transportation, and cooking. Women were consistently younger at capability loss and disability onset than men except in terms of hearing and cooking. Conclusion: These findings suggest that capabilities required for product and service interaction follow a hierarchical pattern of loss, which has practical implications for design. Although interventions to reduce disability in the older population are likely to require changes that address more than one demand, capabilities lost early in old age should take precedence over those lost later. Application: A potential application of this research is in the development of an overall design strategy to enhance older people's ability to live independently.

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The objective of this study was to understand patterns of capability loss among elderly users of products and services. Data from a longitudinal, population-based study were obtained for analysis, which recruited a representative sample of 13,004 people aged 65 years and over from five sites in Great Britain. Participants underwent a baseline interview during 1990-1994 and follow-ups at one, two, three, six, eight, and ten years. Those with full vision, hearing, thinking, locomotion, reaching, and dexterity ability at baseline were included in a survival analysis. Locomotion was the first ability to be lost, followed by reaching, thinking, hearing, vision, and dexterity. Women were consistently younger at capability loss than men except in terms of hearing. These findings suggest that capabilities required for product and service interaction follow a hierarchical pattern of loss, which has practical implications for design. Although improvements to reduce design exclusion are likely to require changes that address more than one demand, capabilities lost early in old age should take precedence over those lost later.@en

The relationship between how designers intend products to be interpreted and how they are subsequently interpreted has often been represented as a process of communication. However, such representations are attacked for allegedly implying that designers' intended meanings are somehow 'contained' in products and that those meanings are passively received by consumers. Instead, critics argue that consumers actively construct their own meanings as they engage with products, and therefore that designers' intentions are not relevant to this process. In contrast, this article asserts the validity and utility of relating intention to interpretation by exploring the nature of that relationship in design practice and consumer response. Communicative perspectives on design are thereby defended and new avenues of empirical enquiry are proposed.

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The design literature contains many diagrammatic models that represent the relationship between how designers intend artefacts to be experienced and how they are subsequently experienced by consumers, users and other stakeholders. Despite the prevalence of such models, they remain largely disconnected from each other, both within and across design disciplines, and also disconnected from the models of communication whose basic structure they share. The existing models are therefore difficult to locate and useful conceptual developments are often overlooked. The consequences of this are that unnecessary effort is expended in developing representations that duplicate those that already exist or new models are developed from inappropriate foundations. To address such issues, this article reviews many of the existing models that can be found in the different disciplines that comprise the fields of communication and design. The most pertinent features of these models are extracted and synthesised into a generic communication-based model of design. This acts as both a guide to what the existing models emphasise and an integrated foundation from which future models might be developed.

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People are living longer and the world population is ageing. At the individual level, ageing leads to functional losses and causes behavioural changes. These phenomena affect product experience on its four levels of response - physical, sensory, cognitive and affective. Unless design takes account of these changes, the quality of experience is compromised. To explore the influence of ageing on product experience a study was carried out with younger and older adults. The findings indicate that older adults had more difficulty understanding how to use products such as computers and mobile telephones. The older adults also tended to develop a less positive relationship with such products and consequently technology was less integrated into their lives. Overall, the study suggests that, with respect to product functionality, the two groups have different needs and expectations. This influences not only their product experiences, but also the extent to which technology is accepted and adopted.@en

Diagrams are effective instruments of thought and a valuable tool in conveying those thoughts to others. As such, they can be usefully employed as representations of a research domain and act as stimulus materials in interviews. This process of graphic elicitation may encourage contributions from interviewees that are difficult to obtain by other means. By representing concepts and relationships that other visual artefacts cannot depict, diagrams provide a complementary addition to conventional interview stimuli. This article discusses the application of graphic elicitation within the broader context of the diagramming process. Consideration is given to the unique characteristics of diagrams and the ways in which they are interpreted. Thus, the specific benefits that diagrams offer as interview stimuli may be understood. Following this, an example study is described in which the graphic elicitation process was employed in interviews with industrial designers. Reporting on a study in which the interviewees possessed a well-developed graphic sensibility allows a broad range of graphic elicitation's potential benefits to be illustrated. In closing the article, a discussion is held on the range of methodological issues that must be addressed when employing diagrams in a research study.

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Although consumer research activities are often described in relation to functionality and usability, the influence of consumer research on product aesthetics has received comparatively little attention. To address this issue, a qualitative study was undertaken exploring the influence of consumer research on the visual form of products. After describing the nature of the study, this paper outlines the process of consumer research as it applies to design. There then follows discussion of how consumer research directly influences product aesthetics and how it exerts further influence by shaping the politics of designer-client relationships. Finally, there is discussion of the barriers that prevent or limit the application of consumer research and the challenges that are encountered in applying its findings to the aesthetic aspects of design.@en

The process of member validation requires researchers to present their findings back to the communities that have been studied to gain their appraisal of the work. By depicting subject matter that ranges from the physical to the conceptual, diagrams provide a valuable alternative to the written documents traditionally used in member validation. This paper reports on a study in which diagram-based member validation was used to assess the accuracy and acceptability of the researchers' interpretations. The manner in which the technique was implemented, the benefits that were realized and possible directions for future work are all discussed.

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This paper discusses consumer response to product visual form within the context of an integrated conceptual framework. Emphasis is placed on the aesthetic, semantic and symbolic aspects of cognitive response to design. The accompanying affective and behavioural responses are also discussed and the interaction between cognitive and affective response is considered. All aspects of response are presented as the final stage in a process of communication between the design team and the consumer. The role of external visual references is examined and the effects of moderating influences at each stage in the process of communication are discussed. In particular, the personal, situational and cultural factors that moderate response are considered. In concluding the paper, implications for design practice and design research are presented.

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