Design Fixation¶
Jansson, D. G., & Smith, S. M. (1991). Design Fixation. Design Studies, 12(1), 3-11.
Cited by¶
4 citations across 4 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Cognitive Entrenchment
This sourceDesigners anchor to established solutions even when novel problems demand different approaches.
Domain-specific¶
- Functional Fixedness
- Insight problem solving — the canonical home: Duncker's candle problem, Maier's two-string problem, and repurposing variants where an object must be used outside its conventional affordance. Engineering design fixation — design-by-example research shows that exposure to an example solution locks subsequent designers into reusing its component categories
This sourceThe experiments that named and demonstrated design fixation, a blind adherence to prior ideas that measurably limits the output of engineering conceptual design.
Supported in partVerified against the source
- Insight problem solving — the canonical home: Duncker's candle problem, Maier's two-string problem, and repurposing variants where an object must be used outside its conventional affordance. Engineering design fixation — design-by-example research shows that exposure to an example solution locks subsequent designers into reusing its component categories
Mechanisms¶
- Design Iteration
- Its failure mode is design fixation — anchoring on an early concept and iterating only within it, polishing a fundamentally wrong idea instead of stepping back to a different one.
This sourceDefines design fixation as adherence to an existing idea that constrains conceptual design.
- Its failure mode is design fixation — anchoring on an early concept and iterating only within it, polishing a fundamentally wrong idea instead of stepping back to a different one.
- Iterative Design Review Cycle
- Its characteristic failure is design fixation — the team narrows onto an early concept and reviews only variations of it, so the cycle converges smoothly on a local optimum while a better form was never on the table.
This sourceDefines design fixation as blind adherence to an existing idea that limits conceptual-design output.
- Its characteristic failure is design fixation — the team narrows onto an early concept and reviews only variations of it, so the cycle converges smoothly on a local optimum while a better form was never on the table.
Verification¶
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