Numerous studies have been done to assist designers in generating creative concepts. However, few studies focus on satisfying designers’ cognitive demands. As the first step of addressing this issue, this paper attempts to investigate the relation between cognitive load and creativity in the conceptual design process. A pilot study was conducted with nine participants divided into experienced and novice groups. Cognitive load was evaluated by the intensity of mental effort. Creativity evaluation was based on four measures: novelty, variety, quality, and quantity. The results indicate that mental effort is more related to novelty and quantity, while experience in design has more effect on variety and quality. The relation between mental effort and creativity was investigated from the perspective of cognitive efficiency, which shows that the experienced group has relatively higher scores in cognitive efficiency than the novice group.
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