A DUAL-PROCESS ANALYSIS OF DESIGN IDEA GENERATION

摘要

A traditional engineering education primarily teaches students to use analytical methods when solving problems, which are effective in most real-world situations. However, heavily analytical approaches often hinder creative output and therefore more intuitive methods have the potential to increase novelty in design. Dual-process theory is an established model in psychology and human decision making that separates fast, intuitive Type 1 processes from slow, analytical Type 2 processes, but to this point has not been applied to engineering design methodology. A exploratory dual-process pilot study of a design experiment using retrospective protocol analysis exposed the difference in novelty of ideas produced by intuitive and analytical thinking. The preliminary results suggest that Type 1 intuitive thinking is correlated with a higher average idea novelty up to a threshold. An equal balance of Type 1 and Type 2 thinking maximized novelty potential. Understanding this relationship and the importance of intuitive thinking in the design process is important to improving the effectiveness of conceptual design thinking and has implications in design education and modeling cognitive design processes.