Objective: This study investigates whether the availability of a monochromatic design view can prevent an early fixation on details during the preliminary stages of a design task. Background: Design students are trained to tentatively sketch the overall form of a design concept before attending to its details. Literature suggests that using multiple colors for sketching a concept causes a gestalt-like grouping phenomenon and influences designers to adopt a contrasting strategy of adding details before sketching the overall form. An empirical study was conducted to assess the validity of these findings. Method: In the study, 20 participants, randomly assigned to two groups, were allowed to use multiple colors to sketch a design concept within a digital sketching environment. However, only the single-color group had the ability to view a sketch, as it would appear in monochrome. Results: Both groups parsed the design concepts into their basic components and used colors as a means of distinguishing one component from another. However, the single-color group added significantly more details than the first or the multicolor group after sketching the overall form. Conclusion: Verbal reports suggest that the single-color group was able to avoid an early fixation on details because the single-color view eliminated the discontinuities induced by the variation in color and allowed the participants to attend to the overall form instead of the individual components. Application: The current findings highlight the importance of providing a monochrome design view within a sketching environment to avoid an early fixation on a specific design solution.
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