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Do You See What I See? Exploring Vividness of Visual Mental Imagery in Product Design Ideation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 May 2022

E. Hart  and
L. Hay
E. Hart
Affiliation:
University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom
L. Hay*
Affiliation:
University of Strathclyde, United Kingdom
*
laura.hay@strath.ac.uk

Abstract

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This paper reports a preliminary study (N=16) exploring vividness of visual mental imagery in product design ideation. Vividness was observed to vary across designers in the study, from high (68.8% of participants) to moderate (18.8%) to low (12.5%). A significant, strong positive relationship was found between vividness and creativity. Most participants reported using imagery always or sometimes, except one who has difficulties forming mental images. The results have several implications, including the possibility of other ‘ways of imagining’ not captured by visual reasoning models of design.

Keywords

design cognitiondesign creativityvisualisationmental imageryidea generation
Type
Article
Information
Proceedings of the Design Society , Volume 2: DESIGN2022 , May 2022 , pp. 881 - 890
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
The Author(s), 2022.

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