A comparative review on the role of stimuli in idea generation

Abstract This paper reports a systematic literature review with the aim of determining the role of stimuli and other factors, such as timing, the designers’ background, expertise, and experience, in the idea generation phase of conceptual design related to engineering and industrial design and architecture. “Stimulus” is a general expression for a source of information characterized by several features, including the source (internal or external), analogical distance (near or far), and form (textual, visual, or other). Several recent studies have been conducted on this topic involving neurophysiological measurements with significant results. This comprehensive review will help to determine if the neurophysiological results are consistent with those from protocol studies. This allows for determining how the features of stimuli affect – among the related factors – designers’ performance in idea generation. The literature search was carried out using the Snowball and PRISMA methods. A total of 72 contributions were selected from studies adopting protocol analysis or neurophysiological measurements. This study presents a framework to support the selection of stimuli most likely to maximize performance, based on the designer's background and expertise in the different idea generation metrics. The main findings of the framework suggest that visual stimuli enhance the creative performance of designers, regardless of their background, while textual stimuli foster the variety and quality of ideas, but only in engineering and industrial designers. Comparing the findings, the resulting framework reveals aspects of stimuli that require further investigation. These can be considered valuable insights for new directions for design research.