Research Of The Effect Of Sub Consciousness On Sudden Moment Of Inspiration (SMI) In The Sketching Process And Prototype System Design

The purpose of Industrial design is to find the potential problems in our life and to solve it in a reasonable way. Sudden Moment of Inspiration (SMI) always helps designer carry forward their design process through breaking the inherent way of thinking. To get SMI happened reasonably can improve the efficiency of design and the quality of the final putout. This article will expatiate and discuss the related concepts of SMI in order to put forward a hypothesis that sub consciousness has the effect on SMI in the sketching process of industrial design. And the article will explore and validate the hypothesis through experiments.Chapter One introduces the significance of this research and the related research status of SMI, and gets the research vacancy of SMI in industrial design. First, SMI always helps designer carry forward their design process through breaking the inherent way of thinking, which improves the efficiency of design and the quality of the final putout. Market and Psychology have studied SMI from the perspective of sub consciousness while there’re limited research in Design. Nowadays, Design has played a more and more important role in various fields. As a result, studies on improving design efficiency and quality are of great importance. Through the related research status of SMI, the methods of studying SMI and data analyzing in other fields can be introduced and concluded, which can be referred as the basis for the follow-up study.Chapter Two makes an introduction of the related concepts of SMI and clarifies the logical relationship between concepts to put forward the hypothesis. Because SMI is one manifestation of creative thinking, this chapter first introduces the definition of creative thinking, the definition and characteristic of SMI. After that, several typical models of the process of creative thinking are summarized and reviewed. And the widely accepted Wallace’s’Four-order model’was selected to as the theoretical basis of this research. Besides, it has been demonstrated that the product design process results from the repeat application and perfection of the ’Four-order model’. Through interpretation the’Four-order model’, it can be concluded that the key influencing factors of SMI in the creative thinking process are out consciousness and sub consciousness. Out consciousness is one’s thought, which is the accumulation of education and experiments. As a consequence, sub consciousness is regarded as the changeably influencing factor of SMI in design. And the hypothesis is put forward from the subliminal and suprathreshold aspects.Chapter Three explores the suprathreshold hypothesis through experiments. There are a pre-experiment and a formal experiment. In the formal experiment,9 undergraduates majoring in industrial design with same education experience were selected to receive a design task. The design processes and sketches of the 3 groups were recorded and analyzed, using concurrent and scientifically experimental methods such as real-time videos and protocol interviews. Comparison of the 3 experiments provided convincing evidences of the effect of sub consciousness on sudden moments of inspiration in the sketching process of industrial design.Chapter Four explores the subliminal hypothesis through experiments. The experiment is similar but different from the suprathrehold experiments. The pictures used in the experiment are fuzzy treated. Conclusions can be inferred after comparison of the 3 experiments.Chapter Five collects the conclusions of two experiments and makes a discussion. Then, a prototype system is designed with the application of the result of discussion. It is clear that sub consciousness from suprathreshold has effect on SMI in the sketching process while the effect of sub consciousness from subliminal needs further research and discussion. Based on the conclusion, the prototype system is designed, which aims to help the new hand or students complete sketches of higher quality. After design, there’s a test to validate the effect of the prototype system.Chapter Six makes a summary and prospect. It concludes the main work of this paper and analyses the deficiencies and the next step for research.