Inspiration, images and design: an investigation of designers' information gathering strategies

TLDR

Design cognition studies aim to describe designers' mental strategies, but the early informational phase of design remains poorly understood, underscoring the need for tools that enhance creativity. The study seeks to identify and evaluate the inspirational information designers use before idea generation and to describe how they employ it. Researchers conducted a two‑part study comprising interviews and an experimental protocol with professional designers. Results show that designers use traditional and electronic resources differently, and that their information‑gathering strategies are strongly shaped by personal preference.

Abstract

Computational tools should efficiently support, and even enhance, designers' creativity. As a ground for such developments, design cognition studies aim at describing designers' mental strategies within the design process. So far, most researches have been focused on the idea generation phases, e.g. sketching activity, which is explicit enough to be observed and described. However, the early stages of design remain incompletely understood, while the informational phase is identified as a crucial step of the design process. In this context, our objective is to identify and evaluate inspirational information used by designers before generating ideas, and to describe how inspirational information is used. In this article, we report a two-part study (interviews and experimental protocol) carried out with professional designers. The main outcomes demonstrate that traditional and electronic resources are not used in the same way by designers. We also show that information gathering strategies are strongly influenced by designers' preference.