Recognition of Design Fixation via Body Language Using Computer Vision

The main objective of this study is to recognize design fixation accurately and effectively. First, we conducted an experiment to record the videos of design process and design sketches from 12 designers for 15 minutes. Then, we executed a video analysis of body language in designers, correlating body language to the presence of design fixation, as judged by a panel of six experts. We found that three body language types were significantly correlated to fixation. A two-step hybrid recognition model of design fixation based on body language was proposed. The first-step recognition model of body language using transfer learning based on a pretrained VGG-16 convolutional neural network was constructed. The average recognition rate achieved by the VGG-16 model was 92.03%. Then, the frames of recognized body language were used as input vectors to the second-step fixation classification model based on support vector machine (SVM). The average recognition rate for the fixation state achieved by the SVM model was 79.11%. The impact of the work could be that the fixation can be detected not only by the sketch outcomes but also by monitoring the movements, expressions, and gestures of designers, as it is happening by monitoring the movements, expressions, and gestures of designers.

Utilizing EEG to Explore the Mental States Involved in the Occurrence of Different Levels Design Fixation

Design fixation, which is a form of cognitive bias, is commonly reported to unconsciously occur when designers take the path of least resistance during the fulfillment of a design task. It’s thought to be easy and effortless. Nonetheless, the mental states such as mental effort and mental fatigue that accompany the occurrence of different levels of design fixation are still unknown. In the present study, an experiment using electroencephalography (EEG) was conducted to examine the mental effort and mental fatigue involved in the occurrence of different levels of design fixation during creative idea generation. Fluency, flexibility, the degree of copying, and the time spent generating ideas were used to evaluate the design performance and fixation level of each participant, and the task-related power changes of theta, alpha, and beta bands of participants with higher and lower levels of fixation during creative idea generation process were compared and analyzed separately. The comparison results revealed that participants with higher levels of design fixation made the less mental effort and showed higher levels of mental fatigue during the ideation process compared to those with lower levels of design fixation. These results provide additional evidence for the mental states involved in the occurrence of design fixation and could contribute to a deeper understanding of design fixation from the neuroscience perspective.

Manufacturing Fixation in Design: Exploring the Effects of Manufacturing Assumptions on Design Ideas

Designing successfully for any new or unfamiliar manufacturing technology requires an ability to look beyond the manufacturing limitations that have constrained one’s design ideas in the past. However, potential cognitive bias or fixation on familiar manufacturing processes may make this a challenge for designers. In this paper we introduce the novel concept of Manufacturing Fixation in Design (MFD), which we define as unconscious and often unintentional adherence to a limited set of manufacturing processes and/or constraints and capabilities during the design ideation process. This concept is explored as a subset of design fixation, a cognitive bias often experienced by designers and engineers. After reviewing related literature in design fixation, we introduce MFD as a type of design fixation and explore ways in which fixation on manufacturing might be assessed. We then offer an exploratory case study involving design for additive manufacturing, an advanced manufacturing technology that has seen considerable interest lately. The case study involves a Design for Additive Manufacturing workshop given at an aerospace technology company headquartered in the United States with participants who are professional engineering designers. Results from the study are used to explore how MFD manifests and how its impact in design and optimization for manufacturing might be measured. Future research and next steps to validate the existence of MFD are also discussed.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN BEGINNING AND ADVANCED STUDENTS USING SPECIFIC ANALOGICAL STIMULI DURING DESIGN-BY-ANALOGY

Studies reported the effects of different types and different levels of abstraction of analogical stimuli on designers. However, specific, single visual analogical stimuli on the effects of designers have not been reported. We define this type of stimuli as specific analogical stimuli. We used the extended linkography method to analyze the facilitating and limiting effects of specific analogical stimuli and free association analogical stimuli (nonspecific analogical stimuli) on the students' creativity at different design levels. The results showed that: (1) Advanced students focused on exploring the depth of the design problem while beginning students tended to explore the breadth of the design problem. (2) Nonspecific analogical stimuli enhanced the creativity of beginning students. However, its impact on advanced students is less pronounced. (3) The specific analogical stimuli attract the students into design fixation. Furthermore, it has a more pronounced effect on advanced students. These results illustrate the differences in the effects of specific analogy stimuli on the students at different design levels. It clarifies the use of analogical stimuli in design and the teaching of analogical design methods in design education.

The trade-off between design fixation and quality: Physical objects or multiperspective pictures?

Physical objects and their pictures are two main kinds of design stimuli of creative activity, which can improve design quality but may induce design fixation. Previous studies are focused on the case where participants face a single picture, and their design stimulus may be incomplete as compared with the participants facing objects. To fully explore the influence of physical and pictorial examples on design novices, we investigated design fixation and design quality when they were provided with multiperspective pictures having information remarkably similar to physical objects. Specifically, two novice groups individually created their own designs after observing several examples by the way of the above two presentation modes. These designs were evaluated by two evaluators in terms of similarity, originality, and completeness. Statistical analysis showed that no significant difference was found in similarity and originality between the two groups, whereas the designs of the physical group outperformed those of the pictorial group in terms of completeness. This finding indicated that the two groups showed the same degree of design fixation, as multiperspective pictures presented most of the form information of the physical object. The results suggest that when instructing design novices, it is essential to control how to present design examples at different stages of the design process.

Utilizing EEG to Explore Design Fixation during Creative Idea Generation

Design fixation is related to the broad phenomenon of unconscious cognition bias that hinders the generation of creative solutions during the conceptual design process. While numerous research studies have gone into the study of design fixation, the experimental methods used were external to the cognitive process of designers; thus, there are some limitations. To address these limitations, the present study utilized electroencephalography (EEG) to explore the differences in neural activities between designers with different degrees of design fixation during creative idea generation. Fluency, flexibility, and the degree of copying were used to evaluate the design performance and fixation degrees of all participants; for the follow-up analyses on brain activity patterns, participants were then divided into the Higher Fixation Group and the Lower Fixation Group according to the evaluation of the degrees of copying. Next, participants in each group were contrasted separately against the task-related alpha power changes during creative idea generation. The comparison results revealed that participants with lower design fixation demonstrated stronger alpha synchronization in frontal, parietotemporal, and occipital regions during creative idea generation, while participants with higher design fixation showed stronger task-related alpha desynchronization in frontal, centroparietal, and parietotemporal regions. Such findings suggested that participants with higher fixation showed lower solution flexibility because of the inability to inhibit the solutions generated overrelying on intuition. These results could contribute to a deeper understanding of design fixation from the neuroscience perspective and provide essential theoretical supports for the subsequent defixation methods and tool development.

Evolutive 3D Modeling: A Proposal for a New Generative Design Methodology

At present, traditional 3D modeling programs consist of a set of tools that reflect conventional means of mechanical manufacturing and have limitations in relation with the current manufacturing capacities. On the other hand, organic and morphing 3D modeling programs are designed to transform a model from one known shape to another also known shape. Generative design helps the designers to detach themselves during the design process and can provide them with completely unexpected geometrical solutions. In this paper, starting from 3D morphing techniques and genetic algorithms, a new methodology of product shape definition is developed, capable of imitating processes that occur in nature and aimed at creating new and different product designs. This methodology enables to overcome the limitations imposed by design fixation and allows better exploitation of the great possibilities granted by the new manufacturing techniques, most notably additive manufacturing. The initial process of research and information gathering gives this work a solid basis to develop the new methodology. The results of this initial process are briefly resumed in this paper in order to explain the main motivation for developing this work. The workflow of this methodology is presented as a theoretical process, since its implementation has not been, at least for the moment, put into practice. Before presenting the conclusion for this proposal, several examples have been formulated in order to help the reader to catch the point of the entire process.

Identifikasi Efektifitas Faktor Pada Proses Kerja Engineering Kontraktor di Proyek Konstruksi Secara Jarak Jauh di Masa Pandemi Covid-19

<p><em>Covid-19 pandemic affected all of the country. Not only affected public’s health, pandemic also massively affected the social state and country’s economy. Some of the country already entering the recession, not limited to Indonesia. One of contributed sector in Indonesia’s economy is construction industry sector which this sector now in declining growth. The implementation of Work-from-Home (WFH) in construction company is one of many ways so the economy and construction sector in Indonesia keep on the track. On contrary, contractor’s engineering process in project need intensed communication with stakeholder and direct monitoring so it’s against the WFH concept. This research aim to know the effectivity of every contractor’s engineering process in project during pandemic. The result of research found that quantity survey process, making of method statement, and job safety analysis are effective enough to do with WFH concept. While the process of site construction progress calculation, design fixation, and shopdrawing process and approval are not effective to do wih WFH concept.</em></p>

Mitigating design fixation: A visualization tool for enhancing situation awareness

External stimuli can stimulate a designer's creativity and improve the outcome of design ideation for product/service concept generation. A psychological phenomenon that may occur during such utilization of external stimuli is design fixation, which is widely believed to adversely affect the ideation outcome. One of the difficulties in preventing or alleviating design fixation is that the designer may not easily detect or predict its occurrence during the mentally demanding task of ideation. In an effort to address the problem of design fixation, the current study develops a situation awareness support system, which helps the designer perceive and predict the occurrences of design fixation. The situation awareness support system is empirically evaluated in its utility in mitigating design fixation. The study result shows that the situation awareness support system can help the designer to mitigate design fixation while not influencing significant impact on the ideation performance.

Conceptualising Design Fixation and Design Limitation and Quantifying Their Impacts on Resource Use and Carbon Emissions

Design for sustainability needs to apply a societal perspective. The purpose of this paper is to combine the concept of design fixation with higher levels of analysis. Design fixation is used to describe a blind adherence to known concepts during the design process. It is used mostly at the micro level of design with the focus on the activities of an individual designer or a group of designers. In this paper, design fixation gets conceptually lifted to the levels of the organisation and the institution. We ask how the understanding of design fixation helps to achieve higher resource efficiency. Examples of organisational and institutional design fixations are presented. A System Dynamics model is used to simulate the impacts of design fixation on resource use of a sociotechnical laundry systems. Applying this lens suggests that in order to solve societal design fixations, systemic parameters like infrastructure, business models, or policies need to be considered design parameters. The simulation results show that high-level design fixations can have significant impact on resource use.