The effect of explicit instructions in idea generation studies

AbstractIn inspiration and fixation experiments, example designs are often provided along with the instructions for how participants should treat them. However, research has not reached a consensus about the influence of such instructions, leading to difficulties in understanding how the examples and the instructions each affect idea generation. We conducted an experiment in which 303 participants designed for the same design problem, while given different examples and instructions, which ranged from strongly encouraging copying the examples to strongly discouraging copying. Exposure to the examples affected the number and type of ideas generated, whereas exposure to the instructions did not. However, instructions did affect how participants incorporated features of the examples in their ideas. Encouraged groups incorporated many features of the examples, while also incorporating structural features more than conceptual ones. Surprisingly, the incorporation of features in discouraged groups was not different from that of groups given no instructions or even no stimulus. This indicates that concrete features may be easier to recognize and reproduce than abstract ones, and that encouraging instructions are more effective than discouraging ones, despite how strict or lenient those instructions are. The manipulation of different features also allowed us to observe how similar approaches to solving a design problem can compete for attention and how the calculation of feature repetition can be misleading depending on how common or obvious the features might be. These findings have implications for the interpretation of results from fixation studies, and for the development of design tools that present stimuli to assist idea generation.</jats:p

Research data supporting "Fluency results in design fixation experiments: an additional explanation"

This is a ZIP archive file (.zip) containing both portable network graphics (.png) and comma-separated values (.csv) files: > The png files contain the annotated sketches that participants generated during the ideation session. This file type allows the non-digital data to be saved in a digital document format. The ideas from each group are stored into different folders, whose naming corresponds to the experimental conditions reported in the publication (FLUENCY RESULTS IN DESIGN FIXATION EXPERIMENTS: AN ADDITIONAL EXPLANATION). > The csv file contains the evaluation for all ideas generated by all participants in the experiment. This file type allows data to be saved in a table structured format. In the table, the column headings are self-explanatory, provided you also have the corresponding publication given above as a reference. The data was collected in January 2015 from 55 undergraduate students in engineering at the University of Cambridge, UK. Participation in the experiment was part of the students’ education, and was aimed at collecting data that could later be used to introduce them to the concept of design fixation. No demographic data was collected from the participants, but as first year undergraduate students they were broadly similar in age and design experience, drawn from a cohort with a male-female ratio of 3:1. No consent form was required for this experimentEPSRC [EP/K008196/1] CAPES Foundation [BEX 11468/13-0

Thoughts of death disrupt foresight: the 'ostrich bias'

Humans have a predilection for optimistic personal scenarios when thinking of their future. They tend not to project stressful episodes into the future and are inclined to repress the idea of their vulnerability, to an extent that, when explicitly asked to think about their death, they use various cognitive strategies to deny it. In this study, we investigated the specific coping persons can use when required to construct personal future scenarios after imagining their own death. Our participants were asked to describe in details first the moment of their own’s death and then past and future personal events. We observed a selective reduction in specificity, but not in accessibility, of future simulations, whereas past episodes were normally re-constructed in all the conditions. We named this effect the ‘ostrich bias’. We interpreted it as a protective behaviour against future thoughts that could possibly direct toward an inescapable mental threat

Incidenza delle cardiopatie congenite in Sardegna.

La letteratura internazionale riporta un'incidenza delle cardiopatie congenite (CHD) compresa tra 8 e 10% nati vivi. Uno studio di tal genere non è mai stato effettuato nella popolazione sarda e la realtà geografica della Sardegna è tale da non permettere un confronto con le ricerche effettuate in altre regioni itlaiane, anche se dati aneddotici riportano un'incidenza superiore a quella definita in letteratura. L'obiettivo del presente studio è stato pertanto quello di quantificare, tramite un'analisi retrospettiva, la reale incidenza delle cardiopatie congenite nella popolazione sarda, di identificare le cardiopatie più frequenti e di studiarne la distribuzione all'interno dell'isola

Groma 1 (2007). Archeologia tra Piceno, Dalmazia ed Epiro

Archeologia tra Piceno, Dalmazia ed Epir