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Design activity occurs in many professions, ranging from technical to more artistic domains. Whatever the domain, it is a constant challenge for designers to introduce creativity in each design project they work on and minimize the tendency to repeat familiar design features. The goal of this paper is to present a cognitive approach to design problem solving as well as an experimental study. This study aims at determining whether creative ideas can be enhanced by the presentation of external sources of inspiration. In particular, we analyse the effect of the presentation of different kinds of sources (intra‐ versus interdomain sources, which are presented as graphical representations or as verbal labels) according to the designers’ level of expertise (lay‐designers versus professionals). Results show that it is possible to enhance evocation processes in design, but that it is dependent on both the nature of sources of …