Innovative product forms drive consumer choice in today's competitive market. The creation of innovative products with aesthetic quality is one of the most distinctive outcomes of a successful design process. As the creative design process has a major impact on the aesthetic expression of products, it is important to both understand the creative design process and to be able to communicate it, e.g. in educational contexts. An important step in the design process is the moment when the designer realizes his/her ideas using visualization tools such as sketches, prototypes, or computerized 3D modelling. Choosing the most suitable tools from the wide range of available tools poses a problem for the designer as all tools have their advantages and disadvantages. In addition, it is not clear how the tools affect the design process or how they affect the aesthetic expression of the products being designed. To address the above mentioned difficulties, a research project is proposed at the division of Design & human factors at Chalmers University of Technology. The results of the research project will be of value to (i) design education by further developing teaching methods in design, (ii) industry by supporting the creative design work and decision making during the design process and (iii) developers of visualization tools by contributing knowledge so that better visualization tools can be developed.