Cognitive Heuristic Use In Engineering Design Ideation

International Journal of Engineering Education (IJEE), 2012

Design Heuristics are prompts that encourage design space exploration during concept generation. Design Heuristics were developed by analyzing trends in innovative products and patterns in ideation by engineering and industrial designers of varying experience levels. In this study, 48 freshmen engineering students were given a short design task and a set of twelve Design Heuristics Cards. Each card described a heuristic, and gave two examples of its application in a product. Students were asked to create new design concepts using the heuristics. The results showed that the concepts created without Design Heuristics were less developed, and were often replications of known ideas or minor changes to existing products. However, concepts created using Design Heuristics resulted in more developed, creative designs. Students often applied the same heuristic in multiple ways, supporting our premise that the heuristics lead to exploring multiple solutions. The results also showed that some students readily applied the heuristics, while others struggled to understand how to apply them. . Her research focuses on the investigation and application of complex professional skills, specifically design ideation, innovation practices, and creative processes within engineering, outside of engineering, and cross disciplinarily. Her research includes an emphasis on the translation of research to practice in the form of pedagogy, curriculum development, and faculty support and programming in implementing evidence-based best practices in teaching and learning.

The proposed research investigates how designers use heuristics, or cognitive strategies, to identify specific solutions in a "trial and error" creative process, and how team collaboration may use multiple heuristics across team members as a means to generate robust designs; that is, designs that remain successful despite variability in consumer preferences, both over people and time. The intent of this study is to understand the cognitive heuristics that support creative, innovative, and robust designs. 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 . It is proposed that designers utilize specific design heuristics to explore the problem space of potential designs, leading to the generation of creative solutions. Further, these design heuristics can be taught, and their use will facilitate design at multiple levels of instruction.

International …, 2012

Design Heuristics are prompts that encourage design space exploration during concept generation. Design Heuristics were developed by analyzing trends in innovative products and patterns in ideation by engineering and industrial designers of varying experience levels. In this study, 48 freshmen engineering students were given a short design task and a set of twelve Design Heuristics Cards. Each card described a heuristic, and gave two examples of its application in a product. Students were asked to create new design concepts using the heuristics. The results showed that the concepts created without Design Heuristics were less developed, and were often replications of known ideas or minor changes to existing products. However, concepts created using Design Heuristics resulted in more developed, creative designs. Students often applied the same heuristic in multiple ways, supporting our premise that the heuristics lead to exploring multiple solutions. The results also showed that some students readily applied the heuristics, while others struggled to understand how to apply them. . Her research focuses on the investigation and application of complex professional skills, specifically design ideation, innovation practices, and creative processes within engineering, outside of engineering, and cross disciplinarily. Her research includes an emphasis on the translation of research to practice in the form of pedagogy, curriculum development, and faculty support and programming in implementing evidence-based best practices in teaching and learning.

This paper explores " problem exploration heuristics, " or cognitive strategies used to identify and reframe design problem descriptions. The way a design problem is structured influences the types of ideas a designer generates; in particular, some framings may lead to more creative solutions and using multiple framings can support diverse solutions. Most existing problem exploration strategies have not been derived from empirical studies of engineering design practice. Thus, in our work, we drew upon a sample of engineering design problems and analyzed how the problem descriptions evolved during design. Examining iterations on the problem description allowed us to identify heuristics evident in designers' re-crafting of problem descriptions. Heuristics were defined based on the elements in each problem description and their perceived role in transforming the problem. We present a systematic methodology for identifying problem exploration heuristics, and describe five unique Problem Exploration Heuristics commonly observed in structuring design briefs.

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.

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.

How can beginning engineers learn to generate a variety of candidate concepts to consider? Because they likely have little experience with idea generation, training in specific techniques may be especially useful. Design Heuristics are an evidence-based tool developed to help engineers expand diversity of ideas considered during the front-end phase of design. Brainstorming is a common ideation technique in both engineering education and practice. Our research sought to compare the characteristics of ideas generated by incoming engineering freshmen using both techniques. The analyses of this study involve qualitative patterns in a subset of data collected from 94 incoming engineering freshmen. We explored diversity, fixation, and the scope of the concepts generated. Ideas were coded based on a variety tree coding scheme, students’ self perceptions, and system vs. component scope. We found that concepts generated using Design Heuristics were more likely to focus on the methods for achieving functions and on specific components, while Brainstormed ideas tended towards more holistic systems. The results suggest that alternative tools for idea generation may serve to focus attention on different qualities of design, and that multiple tools may be important for design in engineering education.

Research supports the central role cognitive strategies can play in successful concept generation by individual designers. Design heuristics have been shown to facilitate the creation of new design concepts in the early, conceptual stage of the design process, as well as throughout the development of ideas. However, we know relatively little about their use in differing disciplines. This study examined evidence of design heuristic use in a protocol study with 12 mechanical engineers and 12 industrial designers who worked individually to develop multiple concepts. The open-ended design problem was for a novel product, and the designers’ sketches and comments were recorded as they worked on the problem for 25 min and in a retrospective interview. The results showed frequent use of design heuristics in both disciplines and a significant relationship to the rated creativity of the concepts. Though industrial designers used more heuristics in their concepts, there was a high degree of similarity in heuristic use. Some differences between design disciplines were observed in the choice of design heuristics, where industrial designers showed a greater emphasis on user experience, environmental contexts, and added features. These findings demonstrate the prevalence of design heuristics in individual concept generation and their effectiveness in generating creative concepts, across two design domains.

2014

This paper describes research investigating the role of Design Heuristics, a concept generation tool used during the design ideation process to support engineers in generating multiple, diverse concepts. Design Heuristics have been successfully tested in engineering classrooms, and have been readily adopted by students to help them create more, more creative, and more diverse concepts. This research brings evidence, methods, and perspectives from multiple disciplines, including cognitive and social psychology, to bear on the problem of innovation in engineering design.

… .dev.upandrunningsoftware.com

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.