Writing in the International journal of Technology and Design Education, McLellan and Nicholl (2011) question the common practice of asking students to start to think about designing an object by considering examples of the type of artifact. As they point out, “if students analyse examples of the same product that are making this immediately limits thinking due to the way m=normative cognitive processes operate” (p. 81). Following an interview study involving teachers and students in six secondary schools, these researchers suggest that:
Teacher might be advised to take a different product as the starting point for design work. This would avoid the default cueing of known knowledge about the being designed to dominate thinking, and would therefore open up possibilities, that is, the task could be more ambiguous or open-ended.
(McLellan & Nicholl, 2011, p. 88)