The Automated Self-Administered Dietary Assessment Tool (ASA24) is a web-based tool that guides participants through completion of a 24-h dietary recall and automatically codes the data. Despite the advantages of automation, eliminating interviewer contact may diminish data quality. Usability testing can assess the extent to which individuals can use the ASA24 to report dietary intake with efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction. This mixed-methods study evaluated the usability of the ASA24 to quantify user performance and to examine qualitatively usability issues in a sample of low-income adults (85% female, 48.2 years on average) participating in a nutrition coupon program. Thirty-nine participants completed a 24-h dietary recall using the ASA24. Audio and screen recordings, and survey responses were analyzed to calculate task times, success rates, and usability issue frequency. Qualitative data were analyzed thematically to characterize usability issues. Only one participant was able to complete a dietary recall unassisted. We identified 286 usability issues within 22 general usability categories, including difficulties using the search function, misunderstanding questions, and uncertainty regarding how to proceed to the next step; 71.4% of participants knowingly misentered dietary information at least once. Usability issues may diminish participation rates and compromise the quality of ASA24 dietary intake data. Researchers should provide on-demand technical support and designers should improve the intelligence and flexibility of the ASA24’s search functionality.

This paper reports insights gained from observing groups of novice designers apply biological analogies to solve design problems. We recorded the discourse of fourth-year mechanical engineering students during biomimetic design sessions. We observed that the availability of associations from superficial or functional characteristics of biological knowledge led to fixation, which affected the designers' ability to identify the relevant analogy. In addition, even after identifying the analogy, the designers fixated on mapping irrelevant characteristics of biological knowledge, instead of developing additional solutions based on the previously detected analogy. The paper also presents initial work towards quantifying analogical reasoning in a design study.

The desire to better understand design cognition has led to the application of literature from psychology to design research, e.g., in learning, analogical reasoning, and problem solving. Psychological research on cognitive heuristics and biases offers another relevant body of knowledge for application. Cognitive biases are inherent biases in human information processing, which can lead to suboptimal reasoning. Cognitive heuristics are unconscious rules utilized to enhance the efficiency of information processing and are possible antecedents of cognitive biases. This paper presents two studies that examined the role of confirmation bias, which is a tendency to seek and interpret evidence in order to confirm existing beliefs. The results of the first study, a protocol analysis involving novice designers engaged in a biomimetic design task, indicate that confirmation bias is present during concept generation and offer additional insights into the influence of confirmation bias in design. The results of the second study, a controlled experiment requiring participants to complete a concept evaluation task, suggest that decision matrices are effective tools to reduce confirmation bias during concept evaluation.

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An emerging research trend has seen concepts from cognitive psychology applied to enhance the creative design process through a more detailed understanding of the underlying cognitive mechanisms. However, the physiological processes by which the human element achieves creative solutions have only recently received significant attention. Understanding the mechanisms that allow the brain to change in response to experience may have implications for creative thought processes. Long-term potentiation (LTP) is one such mechanism, and has already been implicated in learning and memory development. This paper presents a theoretical-physiological explanation of creativity, implicating LTP as a modulator of neural networks. The proposed model is applied to explain existing creativity phenomena, including fixation, incubation, and obstacles in design-by-analogy. The model is then used to describe existing, and propose new methods for overcoming obstacles to creativity in design. The results of a study, which tested one application of the theory — the effect of physical activity on fixation, are also discussed.