Fixated on Fixation? An Exploration of the Benefits and Deficits of Design “Fixation” in Engineering Design

Design fixation is often thought of only as a limiting factor when a designer is generating ideas, but design fixation is defined only as ‘sometimes counter-productive’ indicating that there may be room for good fixation. In addition, design fixation is defined as a ‘blind adherence’, meaning that the designer does not know that they are limiting their idea set. Prior work in fixation has focused on how introducing designers to bad examples can cause a negative adherence to a limited set of ideas, while work in design by analogy has focused on how introducing a designer to the right idea can positively impact the creative output of idea generation. In addition, product dissection has been investigated as a way to inspire creative design with positive results. While researchers have investigated good examples for their positive impact on the creativity of generated ideas, little work has investigated how these good examples are having a positive impact. Therefore, this study aims to understand how exposing designers to different types of products through a product dissection activity impacts how designers are reusing parts in their ideation. In addition, this study investigates if these reuses are unconscious through the use of eye tracking equipment. The results show that reuse of parts is positively related to an individual’s creativity during idea generation. In addition, they show that there is no relationship between eye fixations and design fixation, indicating that reuse might not be unconscious. Overall, the results shed a positive light on reuse and design fixation.