The literature on design thinking indicates that, in order to avoid early fixation on a less than effective overall form, product designers are trained to sketch the overall form for a design before focusing attention on the details of individual components. Using a between-subjects design, an empirical study involving 30 experienced designers was conducted to investigate how design tools can influence this process, specifically investigating the potential for color to induce early fixation on the details of a design rather than first exploring concepts for an effective overall form of that design.
In this study, the participants were randomly assigned to two groups. Both groups performed a design task that involved creating a concept sketch for a lamp by selecting and combining two features from each of the two lamps seen in a reference picture. The participants were asked to assemble several line segments of various sizes and orientations on a computer screen to create the sketch. Group one was provided with the line segments in a single color while Group two had access to the line segments in multiple colors.
It was hypothesized that the availability or use of multiple colors for sketching could influence the participants to focus on the details of the individual components before sketching the overall form. Based on the data from the verbal protocols it was found that the participants in the multi-color group were 33% more likely to verbalize the goal of sketching the overall form than those in the multi-color group. Consistent with these verbal protocols, it was observed that the multi-color group made significantly more revisions (p=0.02) on the first component before leaving it for the first time than after revisiting it (as contrasted with the single color group). This suggests that the multi-color group was more likely to focus on the details of the first component before completing a sketch of the overall form.
One way of explaining these results is to say that the availability of multiple colors influenced the participants to mentally group design elements into discrete objects and create a perceptual or cognitive discontinuity, focusing attention on the details of the first component before sketching the outlines of the rest of the components. As a result, they were less likely to apply their training and to sketch the overall form before working on the details of specific components. Thus, these findings indicate that, like the problem-solving processes involved in diagnosis and planning, the problem-solving processes involved in a creative activity like design can be influenced in fundamental ways by the features of the tool provided.