Conceptual Design Raw EEG Recordings - Open Ended Loosely Controlled Design Experiments

The present dataset includes Raw EEG Recordings in Loosely Controlled Design Experiments at Concordia Design Lab. In this dataset, 27 participants took part in six design experiments. These raw EEGs have not been pre-processed or segmented. The preprocessed version of these EEGs can be found in another dataset (located in Mendeley Data) at: Zangeneh Soroush, Morteza; Zhao, Mengting; Jia, Wenjun; Zeng, Yong (2023), “Conceptual Design Exploration: EEG Dataset in Open-ended Loosely Controlled Design Experiments”, Mendeley Data, V1, doi: 10.17632/h4rf6wzjcr.1 https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/h4rf6wzjcr/1 The detailed information about the dataset is included in the pre-processed version of EEGs. Short description of the dataset: In this dataset, 42 graduate students, aged between 24 and 39, participated in conceptual design experiments. During these experiments, Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals were recorded as the participants engaged in design tasks. However, due to various reasons—three participants not completing all experiments, eleven facing technical issues, and one producing poor quality biosignals—only 27 participants' (including 8 women) EEG data were ultimately included in the dataset. Prior to participation, all individuals provided informed consent. The EEG recording was conducted using a 64-channel BrainVision system (Brain Vision Solutions, Montreal, Canada), with electrodes positioned according to the 10-10 international standard system. The EEGs were recorded throughout the experiments and subsequently underwent preprocessing and segmentation. Each participant tackled six design problems, each comprising five open-ended, self-paced, and loosely controlled design tasks. These tasks were related to designing a birthday cake (BDC), a recycle bin (REB), a toothbrush (TOB), a wheelchair (WHC), a workspace (WOS), and a drinking fountain (DRF). Within each design problem, participants performed five specific tasks: understanding the problem (PU), generating ideas (IG), rating generated ideas (RIG), evaluating ideas (IE), and rating idea evaluations (RIE). Additionally, each session included two 3-minute rest periods with eyes closed (RST1 and RST2) at the beginning and end. To simplify the design process while still mimicking a real-world environment, each design problem was divided into five open-ended tasks. This structure was intended to provide guidance without imposing excessive constraints, allowing participants to work at their own pace and without interruptions. This approach was the primary and sole structure implemented in the experiment to assist participants in addressing the design problems. By submitting the raw EEG signals (in addition to the pre-processed version, which has already been published), we aimed to create data which can be fully explored and utilized for the advancement of the field. Interested researchers can use these signals to implement their proposed EEG analysis and preprocessing methods.