The paper presents a comparative study that explores the effectiveness of creative stimuli to foster the generation of creative ideas in non-trained professionals during a co-creative design session. Solution-related stimuli (e.g. patents or biological strategies) are confronted with problem-based stimuli (e.g. TRIZ contradictions or Ideal Final Result), which are less studied in the literature. The 40 participants to the experimental activity benefited from both kind of stimuli, but the solution-related ones allowed a more comprehensive exploration of the design space.
