Risky Business: The Driving Factors of Creative Risk Taking Attitudes in Engineering Design Industry

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xuan Zheng ◽  
Scarlett R. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Risk Taking ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Driving Factors ◽  
Years Of Experience ◽  
Great Cost ◽  
Fuzzy Front End ◽  
Front End

Designing breakthrough products comes at a great cost to the design industry due to the risk and uncertainties associated with creative ideas. However, without creative ideas, there is no potential for innovation. As such, companies need to appropriately embrace the risk associated with creative concepts in the fuzzy front end of the design process in order to build their value. While previous research has linked risk taking attitudes to creative idea generation and selection in engineering design education, there has been limited research focused on engineering design professionals’ creative risk taking attitude and the corresponding driving factors. This is problematic because without this knowledge we do not know what factors inhibit or promote the flow of creative ideas in engineering design industry. In order to address this gap, a preliminary online survey was conducted with 46 design professionals from a global manufacturing company to understand the potential driving factors of creative risk taking, including educational training, job type (R&D, applied engineering, or management), and years of experience. The results suggest that there is a relationship between employee education level and years of experience and an engineering employee’s willingness to take risks on creative ideas in the fuzzy front end of the design process. Interestingly, the results also show that those individuals primarily responsible for the development (R&D) and selection (management) of creative ideas tend to be more financially risk averse than individuals in traditional engineering positions. These results contribute to the prediction of professionals’ design behaviors and have implications for the management of creative ideas in the early conceptual design stages of engineering design industry.

scholarly journals The Identity of Recycled Plastics: A Vocabulary of Perception

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 1953 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lore Veelaert ◽  
Els Du Bois ◽  
Ingrid Moons ◽  
Patrick De Pelsmacker ◽  
Sara Hubo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Design Process ◽  
Circular Economy ◽  
Evaluation Method ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Recycled Materials ◽  
Front End ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Recycled Plastics ◽  
Level Of Agreement

As designing with recycled materials is becoming indispensable in the context of a circular economy, we argue that understanding how recycled plastics are perceived by stakeholders involved in the front end of the design process, is essential to achieve successful application in practice, beyond the current concept of surrogates according to industry. Based on existing frameworks, 34 experiential scales with semantic opposites were used to evaluate samples of three exemplary recycled plastics by two main industrial stakeholders: 30 material engineers and 30 designers. We describe four analyses: (i) defining experiential material characteristics, (ii) significant differences between the materials, (iii) level of agreement of respondents, and (iv) similarities and differences between designers and engineers. We conclude that the three materials have different perceptual profiles or identities that can initiate future idea generation for high-quality applications. The study illustrates the potential of this evaluation method. We propose that designers can facilitate the valorization and adoption of these undervalued recycled materials, first by industry and ultimately by consumers as well.

Can Design Teams Be Empathically Creative? A Simulation-Based Investigation on the Role of Team Empathy on Concept Generation and Selection

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Alsager Alzayed ◽  
Scarlett R. Miller ◽  
Jessica Menold ◽  
Jacquelyn Huff ◽  
Christopher McComb
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Computational Simulation ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
First Year ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Design Activities ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Research on empathy has been surging in popularity in the engineering design community since empathy is known to help designers develop a deeper understanding of the users’ needs. Because of this, the design community has been invested in devising and assessing empathic design activities. However, research on empathy has been primarily limited to individuals, meaning we do not know how it impacts team performance, particularly in the concept generation and selection stages of the design process. Specifically, it is unknown how the empathic composition of teams, average (elevation) and standard deviation (diversity) of team members’ empathy, would impact design outcomes in the concept generation and selection stages of the design process. Therefore, the goal of the current study was to investigate the impact of team trait empathy on concept generation and selection in an engineering design student project. This was accomplished through a computational simulation of 13,482 teams of noninteracting brainstorming individuals generated by a statistical bootstrapping technique drawing upon a design repository of 806 ideas generated by first-year engineering students. The main findings from the study indicate that the elevation in team empathy positively impacted simulated teams’ unique idea generation and selection while the diversity in team empathy positively impacted teams’ generation of useful ideas. The results from this study can be used to guide team formation in engineering design.

An Engineering-to-Biology Thesaurus for Engineering Design

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacquelyn K. S. Nagel ◽  
Robert B. Stone ◽  
Daniel A. McAdams
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Biological Information ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Functional Modeling ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
Engineering Designs ◽  
Design Activities

Engineering design is considered a creative field that involves many activities with the end goal of a new product that fulfills a purpose. Utilization of systematic methods or tools that aid in the design process is recognized as standard practice in industry and academia. The tools are used for a number of design activities (i.e., idea generation, concept generation, inspiration searches, functional modeling) and can span across engineering disciplines, the sciences (i.e., biology, chemistry) or a non-engineering domain (i.e., medicine), with an overall focus of encouraging creative engineering designs. Engineers, however, have struggled with utilizing the vast amount of biological information available from the natural world around them. Often it is because there is a knowledge gap or terminology is difficult, and the time needed to learn and understand the biology is not feasible. This paper presents an engineering-to-biology thesaurus, which we propose affords engineers, with limited biological background, a tool for leveraging nature’s ingenuity during many steps of the design process. Additionally, the tool could also increase the probability of designing biologically-inspired engineering solutions. Biological terms in the thesaurus are correlated to the engineering domain through pairing with a synonymous function or flow term of the Functional Basis lexicon, which supports functional modeling and abstract representation of any functioning system. The second version of the thesaurus presented in this paper represents an integration of three independent research efforts, which include research from Oregon State University, the University of Toronto, and the Indian Institute of Science, and their industrial partners. The overall approach for term integration and the final results are presented. Applications to the areas of design inspiration, comprehension of biological information, functional modeling, creative design and concept generation are discussed. An example of comprehension and functional modeling are presented.

scholarly journals The Artist as Innovation Muse: Findings from a Residence Program in the Fuzzy Front End

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 88
Author(s):  
Berit Sandberg
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Business Environment ◽  
Transmission Model ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Fuzzy Front End ◽  
Work Related ◽  
Front End ◽  
Scientists And Engineers ◽  
The Impact

In a highly competitive business environment, integrating artists into corporate research and development (R&D) seems to be a promising way to foster inventiveness and idea generation. Given the importance of individual level innovation for product development, this study explores the benefits that employees experience from the artist-in-residence-program at Robert Bosch GmbH, Germany. Qualitative content analysis of interviews with scientists and engineers was performed in order to explore the impact of their encounters with artists in the theoretical framework of the triadic concept and transmission model of inspiration. The findings corroborate the notion that inspiration is a suitable theoretical underpinning for individual benefits of art–science collaborations in the front end of innovation. Scientists and engineers are inspired by the artists’ otherness and transcend their usual modes of perception in favor of enhanced focal, peripheral and bifocal vision. Whereas shifts in perspective are reflected in individual thinking patterns, researchers are hardly motivated to change their work-related behavior. The exchange with artists does not have a concrete impact on technological innovation, because researchers neither integrate impulses into their experiential world nor link them to fields of activity. In the case under scrutiny, artistic impulses do not contribute to idea generation in the sense of front-end activities. The study contributes to research on artists in businesses by illuminating the R&D environment as a hitherto neglected field of activity. While substantiating previous research on artist-in-science-residencies, the results suggest that the potential of such interdisciplinary endeavors is limited.

scholarly journals "FUZZY FRONT END" PRACTICES IN INNOVATING JAPANESE COMPANIES

2006 ◽  
Vol 03 (01) ◽  
pp. 43-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
CORNELIUS HERSTATT ◽  
CHRISTOPH STOCKSTROM ◽  
BIRGIT VERWORN ◽  
AKIO NAGAHIRA
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
New Product ◽  
Market Uncertainty ◽  
Upper Management ◽  
Fuzzy Front End ◽  
Front End ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
Technical Specifications ◽  
Japanese Companies

In this paper, we report on the results of a large-scale study about typical front-end-related innovation practices in 553 Japanese mechanical and electrical engineering companies. We explore typical activities concerning the generation and assessment of new product ideas, the reduction of technological as well as market uncertainty and front end planning. Finally, we report on the differences between successful and unsuccessful companies. Our study confirms earlier findings about the frequent use of creativity techniques in Japan during the process of idea generation. We also find companies to be intensively involved in upper management and customers on NPD projects. While integrating upper management is of vital importance for assessing new product ideas, integrating customers and users is primarily used to developing product ideas and concepts. We further find evidence that successful companies integrate their customers more frequently in the process of developing and assessing new product ideas than non-successful companies. In addition, the former integrate customer requirements into their product definitions more often and also translate these requirements into technical specifications more frequently than non-successful companies. Finally, successful companies more often systematically plan a project prior to its start than unsuccessful ones.

scholarly journals Designing a mobile makerspace: A strategy for increasing diversity by offering engineering outreach workshops to underrepresented youth

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Compeau
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Engineering Design Process ◽  
Design Build ◽  
Underrepresented Youth ◽  
Engineering Outreach ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Physical Spaces

Makerspaces, physical spaces that provide access to fabrication tools, technologies, and resources, are potentially changing the way educators envision teaching and learning. The purpose of this poster is to illustrate how an engineering design process is being used to help guide Connections Engineering Outreach to design, build, implement, and evaluate a mobile makerspace. One of the objectives of the mobile makerspace is to provide outreach workshops to underrepresented and underserviced groups in an attempt to increasing the diversity in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Since January 2018, the mobile makerspace has delivered workshops to approximately 2000 students in Grades 3-8. Preliminary results from an online survey indicate that the workshops provided high levels of student engagement and opportunities to learn about STEM. Interview results also suggest that the workshops are helping build the capacity of educators towards using makerspace technology. This project is yet to complete one full cycle of the engineering design process and will be conducting on-going program evaluation

How Engineering Design Students’ Creative Preferences and Cognitive Styles Impact Their Concept Generation and Screening

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katie Heininger ◽  
Hong-En Chen ◽  
Kathryn Jablokow ◽  
Scarlett R. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Risk Tolerance ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Undergraduate Engineering ◽  
Engineering Design Process ◽  
Individual Traits ◽  
The Impact

The flow of creative ideas throughout the engineering design process is essential for innovation. However, few studies have examined how individual traits affect problem-solving behaviors in an engineering design setting. Understanding these behaviors will enable us to guide individuals during the idea generation and concept screening phases of the engineering design process and help support the flow of creative ideas through this process. As a first step towards understanding these behaviors, we conducted an exploratory study with 19 undergraduate engineering students to examine the impact of individual traits, using the Preferences for Creativity Scale (PCS) and Kirton’s Adaption-Innovation inventory (KAI), on the creativity of the ideas generated and selected for an engineering design task. The ideas were rated for their creativity, quality, and originality using Amabile’s consensual assessment technique. Our results show that the PCS was able to predict students’ propensity for creative concept screening, accounting for 74% of the variation in the model. Specifically, team centrality and influence and risk tolerance significantly contributed to the model. However, PCS was unable to predict idea generation abilities. On the other hand, cognitive style, as measured by KAI, predicted the generation of creative and original ideas, as well as one’s propensity for quality concept screening, although the effect sizes were small. Our results provide insights into individual factors impacting undergraduate engineering students’ idea generation and selection.

Computer-Aided Ethnography in Engineering Design

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Dixon ◽  
Ying Liu ◽  
Rossi Setchi
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Sensor Technology ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Design Data ◽  
Fuzzy Front End ◽  
Front End ◽  
Customer Analytics ◽  
Voice Of Customer ◽  
The Voice ◽  
The Internet Of Things

Modern upsurges of innovative technologies and sciences such as the internet of things, machine learning, cheap sensor technology and cloud computing have yielded new opportunities in the area of engineering design. This paper examines the state of the art of the fuzzy front end of engineering design in capturing customer and market information through ethnography and associated techniques. The reviewed range of technologies involve multimedia capture of ethnography, data analytics, as well as traditional researcher led approaches. Intelligent ethnography is presented as an expansion to customer analytics in the offline field, to capitalise on these developments. As a result of this study, market and design teams will better understand how to capture the voice of customer, design data and market data to push for ever more relevant products and technologies. Finally, a new application named inferred engineering has been identified as a fuzzy front end evidence based ideation technique.

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