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CHRONOBIOLOGY IN DIVERGENT THINKING: HOW DESIGNERS ARE AFFECTED BY TIME OF DAY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2023

Samuele Colombo ,
John S. Gero  and
Marco Cantamessa
Samuele Colombo*
Affiliation:
Department of Management and Production Engineering, Politecnico di Torino, Turin (Italy);
John S. Gero
Affiliation:
Department of Computer Science and School of Architecture, University of North Carolina, Charlotte (USA)
Marco Cantamessa
Affiliation:
Department of Management and Production Engineering, Politecnico di Torino, Turin (Italy);
*
Colombo, Samuele, Politecnico di Torino, Italy, [email protected]

Abstract

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Chronobiology is the science that studies the role of time in biology. The study of time in human bodies revealed the presence of internal rhythms related to the time of day. Considering divergent thinking as one of the essential cognitive activities of conceptual design, this paper presents the results of investigating the effect of time of day on designers’ brain activity while performing divergent thinking tasks. An experiment was run with a revised Alternative Uses Task, measuring brain activity with an electroencephalogram (EEG) device. Students with different educational backgrounds were recruited for this experiment, including engineering and industrial design students, to determine if the time of day affected them differently. The brain waves and related power results show significant differences with respect to the time of day and educational background. The differences are particularly evident considering the interaction of these factors. Further studies are required to understand the relationship between the differences detected and the designers’ behavioural performance and to identify which time of day is most effective for idea-generation activities for designers.

Keywords

Conceptual designCreativityDesign cognitionChronobiologyElectroencephalogram
Type
Article
Information
Proceedings of the Design Society , Volume 3: ICED23 , July 2023 , pp. 887 - 896
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), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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