Design Strategies and Avoiding Fixation
Grabbing your first idea feels efficient, but it can trap you. Learn the design strategies that generate fresh ideas and help you break free of design fixation.
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The first-idea trap
When you start designing, it is tempting to grab your first idea and run with it. But sticking to one idea, or copying an existing product too closely, is called design fixation, and it blocks better solutions. Designers use strategies to break free and generate fresh ideas.
Four design strategies
Edexcel names strategies that help designers generate ideas and avoid getting stuck:
Two designers
The same brief can be tackled in very different ways.
Name it
What is design fixation?
- Getting stuck on one idea or an existing solution
- Working closely with a team of designers
- Designing around the needs of the user
- Testing a product before it is made
Match the strategy
- Collaboration
- User-centred design
- Systems thinking
- Avoiding fixation
- Working with others to share and improve ideas
- Designing around the needs and wants of the user
- Breaking a problem into inputs, a process and outputs
- Not getting stuck on one idea or an existing product
Why break free
Design fixation limits creativity: if you only develop your first idea, you may miss a much better one. Using collaboration, user input, research and systems thinking widens your pool of ideas and leads to stronger, more original designs.
Break the fixation
Which THREE are good ways to avoid design fixation?
- Generate several different ideas, not just one
- Work with others and ask for their input
- Research a wide range of existing products
- Develop only your very first idea
- Copy a competitor product exactly
A systems approach
Put the stages of a systems approach in the right order.
- Inputs: the user need and research
- Process: develop and test ideas
- Output: the finished design
- Feedback: user response used to improve it
Complete the strategy
Design _____ means getting stuck on one idea. To avoid it, a designer can _____ with others, put the _____ at the centre of the design, and use systems thinking to break a problem into inputs, a _____ and outputs. Exploring many ideas leads to more _____ designs.
True or not?
Tap the TWO statements that are true about design strategies.
- Collaboration means working with others to improve ideas.
- User-centred design focuses on the needs of the user.
- Design fixation is a good way to find original ideas.
- A systems approach ignores inputs and outputs.
- The best designers always develop their first idea only.
Which strategy?
- A designer asks a group of users to test a prototype
- A team brainstorms ideas together in a workshop
- A designer maps a problem as inputs, a process and outputs
- A designer sketches ten very different ideas before choosing
- User-centred design
- Collaboration
- Systems thinking
- Avoiding fixation
User-centred design
Put the steps of user-centred design in the right order.
- Understand the user and their needs
- Generate several different ideas
- Ask users to test the ideas and give feedback
- Refine the chosen design
- Produce the final user-centred design
Break the block
A designer keeps getting stuck. Choose the best strategy at each stage.
- A designer can only think of one idea, which copies an existing product. What should they do?
- A designer is unsure what real users actually need. What is the best strategy?
- A complex product has many parts working together. Which approach helps?
Explain the strategies
Explain what design fixation is and how a designer can avoid it.
- Explain what design fixation is
- Describe two strategies that help avoid it
- Explain how one of those strategies generates better ideas
- Give one benefit of avoiding fixation