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When facing a design problem, both novice and expert designers tend to rely on a variety of available sources to get inspired during idea generation. Therefore, searching for and collecting diverse stimuli during the early phases of the design process is considered a well-known practice amongst designers. Despite this general assumption, there is no clear empirical evidence on how novice or expert practitioners get inspired, their preferences on various material sources, or how they value such potential resources. A questionnaire for novice and expert designers was developed in order to better understand these issues. The findings indicate that novices and experts alike tend to look for existing design solutions that resemble the problem(s) at hand, potentially neglecting more abstract and distant information. The results suggest that the designers in this survey show a tendency to not fully explore a number of available resources, ultimately leading to hindrances in their creative processes. Further results of this study uncover interesting information strategies of designers which should be considered when developing creative approaches in design education.