Mind-Wandering

Product Design + 3D

This graduate project is speculative. It contemplates the creation of a game that prompts mind-wandering and incorporates ideation sketching.

Research Inquiry: A speculative investigation into the cognitive state of "mind-wandering". This project asks, "What if a game were designed not to hold attention, but to intentionally induce a creative, meditative state?".

Outcome: A prototype (built in Unity) for a task-based virtual game designed to be undemanding, paired with a system to capture the user's resulting creative ideas. This serves as an example of speculative design and "research through making."

How might design ideation be impelled by an undemanding task-based game that elicits mind-wandering in a virtual world that displays live fragments of the user’s ideation process?

In design, ideation is the step where designers commence creating possible solutions without examining the practicality until a large number of solutions have been produced (Simon, 1969). The goal is to find an unknown solution which is the root of creativity, i.e., to discover the unknown.

Studies have suggested that individuals who mind-wander more frequently in their daily lives may be more creative in general (Baird, 2012).

But what kind of mind-wandering? Studies suggest that individuals that take breaks to participate in undemanding tasks are more likely to mind-wander than those who engage in demanding tasks, rest, or take no break at all (Baird, 2012).

But what are undemanding tasks? And what is the difference between undemanding tasks and demanding tasks? Studies suggest that demanding tasks require more encoding of stimuli and thus, create a higher memory load. On the other hand, undemanding tasks are not merely resting, instead of tasks that require less encoding of stimuli and as a result, create a lower memory load (Baird 2012).