Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T07:50:42.738Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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
*
[email protected]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

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.

References

Athavankar, U., Bokil, P. and Guruprasad, K. (2008), “Reaching out in the mind's space”, Design Computing and Cognition ’08, Springer Netherlands, pp. 321–340. https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8728-8_17Google Scholar
Athavankar, U.A. (1997), “Mental Imagery As a Design Tool”, Cybernetics and Systems, Vol. 28 No. 1, pp. 25–42. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/019697297126236Google Scholar
Bilda, Z., Gero, J.S. and Purcell, T. (2006), “To sketch or not to sketch? That is the question”, Design Studies, Vol. 27 No. 5, pp. 587–613. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2006.02.002Google Scholar
Campos, A. and Pérez-Fabello, M.J. (2009), “Psychometric quality of a revised version Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire”, Perceptual and Motor Skills, Vol. 108 No. 3, pp. 798–802. https://dx.doi.org/10.2466/pms.108.3.798-802Google ScholarPubMed
Fish, J. and Scrivener, S. (1990), “Amplifying the Mind's Eye: Sketching and Visual Cognition”, Leonardo, Vol. 23 No. 1, pp. 117–126. https://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1578475Google Scholar
Fulford, J., Milton, F., Salas, D., Smith, A., Simler, A., et al. . (2018), “The neural correlates of visual imagery vividness – An fMRI study and literature review”, Cortex, Vol. 105, pp. 26–40. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2017.09.014CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gallagher, J. (2019), “Aphantasia: Ex-Pixar chief Ed Catmull says ‘my mind's eye is blind’”, BBC News, available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47830256.Google Scholar
Galton, F. (1880), “Statistics of mental imagery”, Mind, No. 19, pp. 301–318. https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mind/os-v.19.301CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ganis, G. (2013), “Visual Mental Imagery”, in Lacey, S. and Lawson, R. (Eds.), Multisensory Imagery, Springer New York, New York, NY, pp. 9–28. https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5879-1_2Google Scholar
Goldschmidt, G. (1991), “The dialectics of sketching”, Creativity Research Journal, Vol. 4 No. 2, pp. 123–143. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10400419109534381Google Scholar
Goldschmidt, G. (1994), “On visual design thinking: the vis kids of architecture”, Design Studies, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 158–174. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0142-694x(94)90022-1Google Scholar
Hay, L., Duffy, A.H.B., Gilbert, S.J., Lyall, L., Campbell, G., et al. (2019), “The neural correlates of ideation in product design engineering practitioners”, Design Science, Vol. 5. https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/dsj.2019.27.Google Scholar
Hay, L., Duffy, A.H.B., McTeague, C., Pidgeon, L.M., Vuletic, T. and Grealy, M. (2017), “Towards a shared ontology: A generic classification of cognitive processes in conceptual design”, Design Science, Vol. 3, pp. 1–42. https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/dsj.2017.6Google Scholar
Jampole, E.S., Konopak, B.C., Readence, J.E. and Moser, E.B. (1991), “Using mental imagery to enhance gifted elementary students’ creative writing”, Reading Psychology, Vol. 12 No. 3, pp. 183–197. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0270271910120301Google Scholar
Kaufman, J.C., Lee, J., Baer, J. and Lee, S. (2007), “Captions, consistency, creativity, and the consensual assessment technique: New evidence of reliability”, Thinking Skills and Creativity, Vol. 2 No. 2, pp. 96–106. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/J.TSC.2007.04.002CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kavakli, M. and Gero, J.S. (2001), “Sketching as mental imagery processing”, Design Studies, Vol. 22 No. 4, pp. 347–364. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0142-694X(01)00002-3Google Scholar
Kavakli, M. and Gero, J.S. (2002), “The structure of concurrent cognitive actions: A case study on novice and expert designers”, Design Studies, Vol. 23 No. 1, pp. 25–40. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0142-694X(01)00021-7Google Scholar
Kokotovich, V. and Purcell, T. (2000), “Mental synthesis and creativity in design: an experimental examination”, Design Studies, Vol. 21 No. 5, pp. 437–449. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0142-694X(00)00017-XCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kosslyn, S.M. (1995), “Mental imagery”, in Kosslyn, S.M. and Osherson, D.N. (Eds.), Visual Cognition: An Invitation to Cognitive Science, Vol. 2, Cambridge, Mass., pp. 267–296.Google Scholar
Marks, D.F. (1973), “Visual imagery differences in the recall of pictures”, British Journal of Psychology, Vol. 64, pp. 17–24. https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1973.tb01322.xGoogle ScholarPubMed
Milton, F., Fulford, J., Dance, C., Gaddum, J., Heuerman-Williamson, B., et al. . (2021), “Behavioral and Neural Signatures of Visual Imagery Vividness Extremes: Aphantasia versus Hyperphantasia”, Cerebral Cortex Communications, Vol. 2 No. 2, pp. 1–15. https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/TEXCOM/TGAB035Google ScholarPubMed
Oxman, R. (2002), “The thinking eye: visual re-cognition in design emergence”, Design Studies, Vol. 23 No. 2, pp. 135–164. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0142-694X(01)00026-6CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Park, J. and Kim, Y. (2007), “Visual reasoning and design processes”, In: Proceedings of International Conference on Engineering Design 2007, ICED07, pp. 1–12.Google Scholar
Purcell, A.T. and Gero, J.S. (1998), “Drawings and the design process”, Design Studies, Vol. 19 No. 4, pp. 389–430. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0142-694X(98)00015-5CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rademaker, R.L. and Pearson, J. (2012), “Training visual imagery: Improvements of metacognition, but not imagery strength”, Frontiers in Psychology, Vol. 3, pp. 1–11. https://dx.doi.org/10.3389/FPSYG.2012.00224Google Scholar
Shah, J.J., Millsap, R.E., Woodward, J. and Smith, S.M. (2013), “Applied Tests of Design Skills—Part II: Visual Thinking”, Journal of Mechanical Design, Vol. 135, pp. 071004-1-071004–11. https://dx.doi.org/10.1115/1.4005594CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tedjosaputro, M.A., Shih, Y.T., Niblock, C. and Pradel, P. (2017), “Interplay of Sketches and Mental Imagery in the Design Ideation Stage of Novice Designers”, The Design Journal, Vol. 21 No. 1, pp. 59–83. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14606925.2018.1395655Google Scholar
Zeman, A. (2021), “When the mind is dark, making art is a thrilling way to see”, Psyche, available at: https://psyche.co/ideas/when-the-mind-is-dark-making-art-is-a-thrilling-way-to-see (accessed 15 November 2021).Google Scholar
Zeman, A., Milton, F., Della Sala, S., Dewar, M., Frayling, T., Gaddum, J., Hattersley, A., et al. . (2020), “Phantasia–The psychological significance of lifelong visual imagery vividness extremes”, Cortex, Vol. 130, pp. 426–440. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/J.CORTEX.2020.04.003CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed