EEG-based study of design creativity: a review on research design, experiments, and analysis

EEG-based study of design creativity: a review on research design, experiments, and analysis

Brain dynamics associated with design creativity tasks are largely unexplored. Despite significant strides, there is a limited understanding of the brain-behavior during design creation tasks. The objective of this paper is to review the concepts of creativity and design creativity as well as their differences, and to explore the brain dynamics associated with design creativity tasks using electroencephalography as a neuroimaging tool. The paper aims to provide essential insights for future researchers in the field of design creativity neurocognition. It seeks to examine fundamental studies, present key findings, and initiate a discussion on associated brain dynamics. The review employs thematic analysis and a forward and backward snowball search methodology with specific inclusion and exclusion criteria to select relevant studies. This search strategy ensured a comprehensive review focused on EEG-based creativity and design creativity experiments. Different components of those experiments such as participants, psychometrics, experiment design, and creativity tasks, are reviewed and then discussed. The review identifies that while some studies have converged on specific findings regarding EEG alpha band activity in creativity experiments, there remain inconsistencies in the literature. The paper underscores the need for further research to unravel the interplays between these cognitive processes. This comprehensive review serves as a valuable resource for readers seeking an understanding of current literature, principal discoveries, and areas where knowledge remains incomplete. It highlights both positive and foundational aspects, identifies gaps, and poses lingering questions to guide future research endeavors.

One Introduction

One point one Creativity, design, and design creativity

Investigating design creativity presents significant challenges due to its multifaceted nature, involving nonlinear cognitive processes and various subtasks such as divergent and convergent thinking, perception, memory retrieval, learning, inferring, understanding, and designing. Additionally, design creativity tasks are often ambiguous, intricate, and nonlinear, further complicating efforts to understand the underlying mechanisms and the brain dynamics associated with creative design processes.

Creativity, one of the higher-order cognitive processes, is defined as the ability to develop useful, novel, and surprising ideas. Needless to say, creativity occurs in all parts of social and personal life and all situations and places, including everyday cleverness, the arts, sciences, business, social interaction, and education. However, this study particularly focuses on reviewing EEG-based studies of creativity and design creativity tasks.

Design, as a fundamental and widespread human activity, aiming at changing existing situations into desired ones, is nonlinear and complex, and lies at the heart of creativity. According to the recursive logic of design, a designer intensively interacts with the design problem, design environment including stakeholders of design, design context, and design knowledge, and design solutions in the recursive environment-based design evolution process. Zeng conceptualized the design process as an environment-changing process in which the product emerges from the environment, serves the environment, and changes the environment. Convergent and divergent thinking are two primary modes of thinking in the design process, which are involved in analytical, critical, and synthetic processes. Divergent thinking leads to possible solutions, some of which might be creative, to the design problem whereas convergent thinking will evaluate and filter the divergent solutions to choose appropriate and practical ones.

Creative design is inherently unpredictable; at times, it may seem implausible yet it happens. Some argue that a good design process and methodology form the foundation of creative design, while others emphasize the significance of both design methodology and knowledge in fostering creativity. It is noteworthy that different designers may propose varied solutions to the same design problem, and even the same designer might generate diverse design solutions for the same problem over time. Creativity may spontaneously emerge even if one does not intend to conduct a creative design, whereas creative design just may not come out no matter how hard one tries. A design is considered routine if it operates within a design space of known and ordinary designs, innovative if it navigates within a defined state space of potential designs but yields different outcomes, and creative if it introduces new variables and structures into the space of potential designs. Moreover, it is conceivable that a designer may lack creativity while the product itself demonstrates creative attributes, and conversely, a designer may exhibit creativity while the resulting product does not.

Several models of design creativity have been proposed in the literature. In some earlier studies, design creativity was addressed as engineering creativity or creative problem-solving. Used in recent studies, the stages of design creativity include problem understanding, idea generation, idea evolution, and idea validation. Problem understanding and idea evaluation are assumed to be convergent cognitive tasks whereas idea generation and idea evolution are considered divergent tasks in design creativity. An earlier model of creative thinking proposed by Wallas is presented in four phases including preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. The "Preparation" phase involves understanding a topic and defining the problem. During "Incubation," one processes the information, usually subconsciously. In the "Illumination" phase, a solution appears, often unexpectedly. Lastly, "Verification" involves evaluating and implementing the derived solution. In addition to this model, a seven-phase model an extended version of the four-phase model was later introduced containing preparation, activation, generation, illumination, verification, communication, and validation. It is crucial to emphasize that these phases are not strictly sequential or distinct in that interactions, setbacks, restarts, or premature conclusions might occur. In contrast to those empirical models of creativity, the nonlinear recursive logic of design creativity was rigorously formalized in a mathematical design creativity theory. For further details on the theories and models of creativity and design creativity, readers are directed to the referenced literature.