Lassi A. Liikkanen

Inspiring design idea generation: insights from a memory-search perspective

Recently, several investigators have begun to conceptualise idea generation (IG), the process by which new designs are deliberately produced, as a predominantly memory-based activity. In this paper, we consider how psychological, memory-based IG models can help us to understand design IG. We introduce one such model with modifications for experimentation in conceptual product design. In this model, the IG process is divided into two phases: memory sampling succeeded by idea production. We utilise this model to explicate stimulation and fixation effects in design IG. We evaluated empirically two predictions derived from the model that are relevant to design IG – the effect of contextual cueing on memory sampling, and the effect of verbal stimulation on idea production. These questions were investigated in an experiment involving 50 engineering students working individually. The analysis of generated ideas showed that the manipulations affected the ideas, and the contextual cues especially, were an influential part of the design assignments. We also showed that the absence of context information can activate a contextual defaulting strategy. We reflect on the implications of these findings for design practice and education in the conclusions of this paper.

Structural tendencies and exposure effects in design idea generation

All new creations must be based on one’s previously acquired knowledge. In this view, the way in which prior knowledge is organized, accessed, and exploited is fundamental for understanding constructive thought involved in generative tasks. Fixation is often cited as a significant obstacle to solving design problems productively. However, an understanding on the ways that fixation affects idea generation is still relatively limited. This paper presents two design experiments that were designed to evaluate the occurrence and effects of fixation in design idea generation. The first experiment showed that idea generation has a characteristic temporal nature. Designers began by generating ideas from the most common categories, and as these categories were explored they moved on to generate ideas from more novel categories. The second experiment was focused on the use of pictorial examples to stimulate design. The results showed that the timing of idea exposure affected performance in a comparative sense, whereas exposure effects were mostly independent of the commonality of the stimulus ideas. This research highlights a number of factors that influence idea generation performance in design, including sampling probability, time-cycle, and exposure effects.Copyright

The right-hemispheric auditory cortex in humans is sensitive to degraded speech sounds

We investigated how degraded speech sounds activate the auditory cortices of the left and right hemisphere. To degrade the stimuli, we introduce uniform scalar quantization, a controlled and replicable manipulation, not used before, in cognitive neuroscience. Three Finnish vowels (/a/, /e/ and /u/) were used as stimuli for 10 participants in magnetoencephalography registrations. Compared with the original vowel sounds, the degraded sounds increased the amplitude of the right-hemispheric N1m without affecting the latency whereas the amplitude and latency of the N1m in the left hemisphere remained unaffected. Although the participants were able to identify the stimuli correctly, the increased degradation led to increased reaction times which correlated positively with the N1m amplitude. Thus, the auditory cortex of right hemisphere might be particularly involved in processing degraded speech and possibly compensates for the poor signal quality by increasing its activity.

CONTEXTUAL CUEING AND VERBAL STIMULI IN DESIGN IDEA GENERATION

This paper presents an initial empirical test of a cognitive model of memory search in idea generation. In the experiment, we The study shows that these manipulations change the categorical frequencies of generated ideas. The results are generally inline with central assumptions of the model.

Foundations for studying creative design practices

We argue that empirical research on creativity in design is detached from the realities of the design profession and therefore unable to contribute much to the development of the discipline. We believe that by taking an industry needs-centered approach to research and starting by understanding design practices we can find better and more fruitful research questions. This theoretical paper presents an overview of the empirical approaches to studying creativity in design, specifically in the front end of the design process. We define a practice-based approach for design research and review some studies pertinent to this approach. We discuss the theoretical foundations of the practice-based approach and propose it can yield several insights into professional designers productivity. We expect that this style of inquire can advance design tools for both practitioners and students in the future.

Observing the mobile music phenomenon: one in nine commuters is wired

In this study we attempt to quantify the popularity of mobile music device utilization. We present an observational method to study music interaction in the wild and assess the reliability of the method. We apply this method to investigate mobile music device use regionally and globally in Europe, Asia, and North America. Our results show that globally, a stable one ninth of all observed urban commuters is engaged with music gadgets, in Tokyo above the other cities. In depth analysis shows that public displays of music devices are most common late on the working days. A subsample of bicyclists suggests that they utilize music devices even more than the pedestrians, but none of the observed segments is much interacting with the device while in transit. This has several implications for designing ubiquitous music experiences, particularly for modalities utilized in interaction.

Treatment of anxiety from musical obsessions with a cognitive behaviour therapy tool

Musical obsessions and hallucinations are disturbing experiences of repeating internal music. Antipsychotic medication can sometimes reduce these symptoms but can also trigger or augment them. We report the case of a female patient with schizophrenia with drug-resistant obsessive musical hallucinations. The patient volunteered to participate in a 9-month pilot study to follow the development of the condition using an involuntary music and mood inventory. The patient perceived benefits from the intervention, including reduced anxiety, increased feeling of being in control and understanding the condition better. Findings from this case study suggest that cognitive therapy can be a useful complementary method of care for persons with musical obsessions. The presented tool requires further investigations among those with this rare condition.

The contribution of high frequencies to human brain activity underlying horizontal localization of natural spatial sounds

BackgroundIn the field of auditory neuroscience, much research has focused on the neural processes underlying human sound localization. A recent magnetoencephalography (MEG) study investigated localization-related brain activity by measuring the N1m event-related response originating in the auditory cortex. It was found that the dynamic range of the right-hemispheric N1m response, defined as the mean difference in response magnitude between contralateral and ipsilateral stimulation, reflects cortical activity related to the discrimination of horizontal sound direction. Interestingly, the results also suggested that the presence of realistic spectral information within horizontally located spatial sounds resulted in a larger right-hemispheric N1m dynamic range. Spectral cues being predominant at high frequencies, the present study further investigated the issue by removing frequencies from the spatial stimuli with low-pass filtering. This resulted in a stepwise elimination of direction-specific spectral information. Interaural time and level differences were kept constant. The original, unfiltered stimuli were broadband noise signals presented from five frontal horizontal directions and binaurally recorded for eight human subjects with miniature microphones placed in each subjects ear canals. Stimuli were presented to the subjects during MEG registration and in a behavioral listening experiment.ResultsThe dynamic range of the right-hemispheric N1m amplitude was not significantly affected even when all frequencies above 600 Hz were removed. The dynamic range of the left-hemispheric N1m response was significantly diminished by the removal of frequencies over 7.5 kHz. The subjects behavioral sound direction discrimination was only affected by the removal of frequencies over 600 Hz.ConclusionIn accord with previous psychophysical findings, the current results indicate that frontal horizontal sound localization and related right-hemispheric cortical processes are insensitive to the presence of high-frequency spectral information. The previously described changes in localization-related brain activity, reflected in the enlarged N1m dynamic range elicited by natural spatial stimuli, can most likely be attributed to the processing of individualized spatial cues present already at relatively low frequencies. The left-hemispheric effect could be an indication of left-hemispheric processing of high-frequency sound information unrelated to sound localization. Taken together, these results provide converging evidence for a hemispheric asymmetry in sound localization.