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Abstract In this paper, we present results from an experiment using EEG to measure brain activity and explore EEG frequency power associated with gender differences of professional industrial designers while performing two prototypical stages of constrained and open design tasks, problem-solving and design sketching. Results indicate no main effect of gender. However, among other main effects, a consistent main effect of hemisphere for the six frequency bands under analysis was found. In the problem-solving stage, male designers show higher alpha and beta bands in channels of the prefrontal cortices and female designers in the right occipitotemporal cortex and secondary visual cortices. In the design sketching stage, male designers show higher alpha and beta bands in the right prefrontal cortex, and female designers in the right temporal cortex and left prefrontal cortex, where higher theta is also found. Prioritising different cognitive functions seem to play a role in each gender's approach to constrained and open design tasks. Results can be useful to design professionals, students and design educators, and for the development of methodological approaches in design research and education. 

Design space is a common abstraction in design research used in the investigation of design cognition. Although its usefulness has been alleged and has contributed to the knowledge about designing, characteristics and properties of design spaces and how they change while designing are underexplored. Creativity has been recognized as an essential skill for changing the design space from constrained to open spaces. We analyzed the brain activity of designers while performing constrained and open design tasks. This study investigates the neurophysiological activations of professional mechanical engineers and industrial designers in two prototypical design tasks, a problem-solving constrained layout task and an open design sketching task. The analysis focused on comparing the neurophysiological activations of the cognitive demand in three stages of categorical similarity of designing in constrained and open design spaces. Results indicate significant differences of frequency bands activations between stages of the design spaces across and between domains. In particular, the stage of reflecting evoked visual imagination and associative reasoning modes and revealed significant differences in beta bands from the problem-solving stage leading to expanded activation in the sketching stage, which translates in higher activation in the open design task with significant differences in upper alpha and beta bands. We propose the neurophysiological activations as a measure of the pliability of design spaces.