Over the last three decades, design fixation research has emerged as a distinct and productive area of design creativity research, and of design research more generally. In studying an applied aspect of human behaviour, fixation research is unusually restricted in its methodological choices, primarily adopting experimental and statistical approaches. The few relevant qualitative studies remain isolated from the core experimental literature. This limited diversity and limited integration restricts our ability to interpret the relevance of prior work, plan new studies and impact practice. By viewing research as a creative design activity, I argue that the fixation research community is well placed to study and change its own behaviour, and also to inform the behaviour of other research disciplines.

在过去的三十年中，设计固定研究已经成为设计创造力研究以及更广泛的设计研究的独特而富有成效的领域。在研究人类行为的应用方面时，注视研究通常在方法选择上受到限制，主要是采用实验和统计方法。少数相关的定性研究仍与核心实验文献分离。这种有限的多样性和有限的整合限制了我们解释先前工作的相关性，计划新研究和影响实践的能力。通过将研究视为一种创造性的设计活动，我认为固视研究界很适合研究和改变自己的行为，并为其他研究学科的行为提供信息。