Leading by example: Exploring the influence of design examples on children's creative ideation

Creative ideation is integral to the design process; to be considered creative an idea must be deemed both novel and appropriate. Design examples are often provided to inspire creativity but may also constrain designers' imaginations (design fixation), a phenomenon observed during children's ideation in participatory design (PD). This paper addresses a gap in the literature by empirically investigating this phenomenon through an exploratory case study of two game narrative design workshops involving 37 children. Children's design ideas from these workshops were systematically coded by two researchers following a deductive content analysis approach and inter-rater reliability was established. Our findings show that utilising design examples can ensure appropriateness (i.e. narrative relevance and coherence), and albeit some design fixation more often facilitates the creative process by enabling existing ideas to be recycled and combined with novel ideas. This research contributes potential methodological adaptations to better foster children's creativity during PD.