How are design ideas studied over time?

Developing ideas is crucial in creative design processes and has attracted substantial research interest. However, no systematic overview of the various research approaches to studying design ideas exists. This paper presents a review of a corpus of research literature on design ideas and contributes an overview of prevailing methodological approaches for studying design ideas as they emerge and evolve over time. We find that these studies a) typically examine the development of design ideas during short sessions, b) often use controlled experiment setups, and c) rarely explore the relationship between initial design ideas and design process outcomes. We discuss this state of research and advocate the need to supplement current research approaches with methods that address more dimensions of idea development processes. This includes the temporal micro-scale to better understand the emergence of ideas and the macro-scale to illuminate how creative design ideas evolve beyond initial ideation sessions.