Investigating How Design Concepts Evolve in Engineering Students

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Innovation in design depends on successful concept generation. The ideation stage of design is intended to produce multiple, varied concepts from which to develop and choose. Often, instruction on idea generation methods is not offered in engineering classes, however, when taught, it is often through techniques like "brainstorming," which lacks specific ways to generate designs. Further, existing ideation strategies are not based on evidence from designers or rigorous testing through empirical studies.

Design Computing and Cognition ’10, 2011

This paper explores the use of heuristics as cognitive strategies invoked during the process of design. Heuristics are reasoning processes that do not guarantee the best solution, but often lead to potential solutions by providing a simple cognitive "shortcut." We propose that designers use specific design heuristics to explore the problem space of potential designs, leading to the generation of creative solutions. We test whether design heuristics can be taught to novices, and suggest their use will facilitate the design process at multiple levels of instruction. In the present empirical study, we evaluate a set of six instructional heuristics and validate their effectiveness with product concepts generated by novice designers. Six hundred seventy-three drawings were created by 120 first-year college students under four instructional conditions. Drawings were coded according to their content, use of heuristics, creativity, and practicality. The most creative concepts emerged from the experimental conditions where heuristics were introduced. Heuristics appeared to help the participants "jump" to a new problem space, resulting in more varied designs, and a greater frequency of designs judged as more creative. Our findings suggest that simple demonstration of design heuristics may, at times, be sufficient to stimulate divergent thinking, perhaps because these heuristics are readily grasped and contextual application is not required. Based on these findings, a conceptual model for design education emphasizing the importance of using a variety of heuristics is proposed. This model suggests that learning can be enhanced through exposure to a variety of design heuristics, and can supplement formal education and foster personal development in design learning.

International Conference of Design Research Society (DRS)

Ideally, designers move past existing ideas to create novel designs. But designers often experience “fixation,” where new ideas are similar to existing designs. An example concept in a brief, or early attachment to one’s initial ideas, can limit the range of designs considered. This research study explored the use of “Design Heuristics,” to overcome fixation in a design education setting. Design Heuristics are a set of prompts intended to point designers toward different types of concepts. The 77 prompts are derived from empirical studies of designers, and have been shown to be effective in developing design capability. In the study, novice engineering design students first used brainstorming, and continued to generate more ideas using Design Heuristics. The results showed that ideas created during brainstorming were more similar to initial ideas. Concepts created with Design Heuristics were judged less similar and more creative. This suggests fixation on initial examples can be mitigated by using tools like Design Heuristics during design, which contributes to how educators can help students develop ideation skills.

While successful concept generation is essential for innovative solutions, engineering students often receive limited instruction about how to accomplish it. Design Heuristics have been shown to facilitate concept generation by guiding students to explore additional solutions in the solution space. As adoption of new techniques into curricula is often slow, in this study, we investigated how four educators integrated Design Heuristics into their engineering design courses. We conducted interviews to investigate instructors’ preparations, approaches, and classroom experiences while integrating the Design Heuristics pedagogy as well as videotaped the teaching session. The findings revealed that both novice and experienced instructors reported few challenges in lesson preparation and implementation and a positive impact on student strategies to idea generation.

2010 Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings

Research in engineering design has revealed approaches and processes used by engineers to move through a design task. While studies have made evident general approaches in ideation, it is unclear how multiple and varied ideas are generated. When faced with a design problem, how do engineers generate multiple alternative solutions? How do they move from one idea to another? Research in psychology has shown that decision-making often relies on simplified cognitive heuristics. Heuristics are reasoning processes that do not guarantee the best solution, but often lead to potential solutions by providing a "short-cut" within cognitive processing 1. Using a case-study framework, this research identified and categorized types of heuristics engineers used to explore potential designs solutions. Using a think-aloud protocol, five engineers with varying levels of experience were asked to develop conceptual designs for a solar-powered cooking device that was inexpensive, portable, and suitable for family use. Following the think-aloud session, the engineers participated in a retrospective interview designed to provide additional information on the sources of ideas, and their awareness of their own methods of ideation. The protocols were analyzed for evidence of heuristic use, and the relationship between heuristic use and the success of the designs. The results showed extensive use of a variety of design heuristics, characterized as process, local, and transitional in nature. However, the engineers in this study did not report conscious application of local heuristics, suggesting they were not aware of applying them during concept generation. Evidence for the utility of cognitive heuristics in the ideation stage is examined and suggestions for their use in engineering design pedagogy are provided.

This paper presents an analysis of engineering students’ use of Design Heuristics as part of a team project in an undergraduate engineering design course. Design Heuristics are an empirically derived set of cognitive “rules of thumb” for use in concept generation. We investigated heuristic use in the initial concept generation phase, whether heuristic-inspired concepts were carried through to later design process stages, and how concept synthesis within each team’s design process related to heuristic use. The results reveal widespread use of Design Heuristics among the concepts generated by individuals and selected by teams for further development, and a prevalence of concept synthesis within approximately half of the observed teams’ design processes.

2000 Annual Conference Proceedings

Engineering design problems are often ambiguous, ill-structured, and usually have multiple solutions. As a result, a designer's understanding of the problem or possible solutions evolves through a process of iteration. To understand iterative behaviors we need to investigate what information is known by the designer, how that information is acquired and utilized, what kinds of changes to the design problem occurred as a result of these activities, and how these behaviors affect the quality of the final solution and contribute to the efficiency of the design process itself. In our previous work, we developed a cognitive model for capturing both the evolution of these information processing activities and any changes made to the design problem, solution or process. In this paper we present a case study analysis comparing freshmen and senior engineering students. Verbal protocol data and independent measures of the quality of students final design solutions were used to provide illustrative examples of differences in iterative approaches related to experience and performance. An analysis of these behaviors in terms of problem scoping, solution revision, and comprehension monitoring activities will be presented and discussed.

This work reports on a case study in which we followed the design processes of eight student design teams enrolled in a semester-long upper-level design course involving a new ideation tool, “Design Heuristics.” We observed how students formulated concepts and implemented ideas using the Design Heuristics tool in their ongoing projects. Our analysis revealed that all teams carried their heuristic-inspired concepts to their latter stage designs, with seven teams carrying their heuristic-inspired concepts to their final designs and prototypes. As all eight teams studied were working on different design problems, our findings demonstrate the utility and practicality of Design Heuristics across various design contexts. In addition, we found patterns in the design teams’ general approaches to the design process, including synthesis, transformation, and abstraction. Seven of the eight teams showed some evidence of concept synthesis in their design processes, but often struggled in synthesizing multiple concepts together. Additionally, all teams seemed to directly transfer their ideas, concepts, or prototypes from one phase of the design process to another without abstraction (the use of a heuristic in an unanticipated way as a prompt to think of something new), while only three teams showed evidence of abstract transformation to develop their ideas across design process phases (such as from an early design phase to a later one). Our findings provide pedagogical recommendations for using the Design Heuristics tool in design classes and suggest opportunities for further research related to concept generation, development, and synthesis throughout the design process.

Journal of Technology Education, 2019

This study explored the use of heuristics in the design space by novice and expert engineers in the initial ideation of a design solution. Verbal protocol analyses were conducted with four engineering students and four professional engineers as they generated ideas to solve a design problem. Overall, both experts and novices used various types of heuristics. Although novices' heuristics tend to focus on improving the function of the design, experts' heuristics tend to focus on improving both function and form. The implication is that the deliberate teaching of design heuristics, along with other strategies, will help in the development of generative skills of students, stimulating more creative and innovative designs. Validated design heuristics can be integrated within engineering design content at appropriate grade levels to aid in building the repertoire of heuristics used by engineering and technology education students.

2015

Developing and teaching method design remain an important component of many product design and engineering courses. Several scholars have shown that the use of ideation methods may result in better concepts. Yet students do not actively use many methods. In order to understand which ideation methods are used by students during the early phases of concept generation, we examined student journals kept during the length of a practice-based course where students worked on tangible interfaces. Students were not specifically instructed to use any specific method. Our study reveals that students use a limited assortment of ideation methods as part of the early phases of concept generation, often restricting themselves to unstructured brainstorms, finding inspiration from existing products and services. Our study raises questions about method use and education.