This is a ZIP archive file (.zip) containing both portable document format (.pdf) and comma-separated values (.csv) files. (1) The pdf files contain the annotated sketches that participants generated during an ideation session as well as the questionnaire sheet with their answers. This file type allows the non-digital data to be saved in a digital document format. The ideas from each group are stored into different files, whose naming corresponds to the experimental conditions reported in the publication (Inspiration and fixation: comparing the influences of example designs and design principles in idea generation). (2) The csv files contains the evaluation for all ideas generated by all participants in the experiment. This file type allows data to be saved in a table structured format. In the table, the column headings are self-explanatory, provided you also have the corresponding publication (Inspiration and fixation: comparing the influences of example designs and design principles in idea generation) as a reference. The data was collected in January 2015 from 60 Master students in Industrial Design Engineering at the Technical University of Delft - TUDelft, The Netherlands. Participation in the experiment was voluntary; participants received a monetary reward in exchange for their time.,This research data supports 'Inspiration and fixation: comparing the influences of example designs and design principles in idea generation', which will be published in the 'Journal of Mechanical Design'.