Confidently Exploring the Solution Space: The Within-Subject Effects of Product Dissection on Design Variety and Creative Self-Efficacy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth M. Starkey ◽  
Mohammad Alsager Alzayed ◽  
Samuel T. Hunter ◽  
Scarlett R. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Self Efficacy ◽  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Solution Space ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Physical Principle ◽  
Educational Tool ◽  
Working Principle ◽  
Creative Self ◽  
Design Ideas

Product dissection is a popular educational tool in engineering design due to its ability to help students understand the components and sub-components of a product, provide inspiration for new design ideas, and aid in product redesign. While prior research has investigated how dissecting a product before idea generation impacts the creative output of the ideation session, these studies failed to look at the types of ideas generated before dissection or how the type of product dissected impacts this. In addition, few studies have looked at how creative self-efficacy (CSE), or one’s belief in their creative ability, is influenced by these intervention activities. Thus, the current study was developed to respond to these research voids through an exploratory study with engineering design students. The results of the study suggest that virtual dissection helps students generate a larger variety of ideas after the activity at the physical principle, working principle, and embodiment levels, and that the complexity of the dissected product impacts variation at the embodiment level. In addition, CSE was not affected by the dissection activity. These results strongly support the utilization and implementation of dissection practices in engineering education as a means for aiding students in the expansion of the solution space in the early stages of design. They also bring attention to the need to explore the exact cause-effect relationship between innovation interventions and student confidence gains in their creative abilities.

Dissection Versus Incubation: The Within-Subject Effects of Product Dissection Activities on Design Variety

2019 ◽  
Vol 142 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth M. Starkey ◽  
Mohammad Alsager Alzayed ◽  
Samuel Hunter ◽  
Scarlett R. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Solution Space ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Personality Test ◽  
Educational Tool ◽  
Incubation Condition ◽  
Undergraduate Engineering ◽  
Design Ideas

Abstract Product dissection is a popular educational tool in engineering design due to its ability to help students understand a product, provide inspiration for new design ideas, and aid in product redesign. While prior research has investigated how dissecting a product before idea generation impacts the creative output of the ideation session, these studies failed to look at the types of ideas generated before dissection or how the type of product dissected impacts this. Thus, the goal of the current study was to examine how product dissection impacts the solution space explored by students. Fifty-five undergraduate engineering students participated in the experiment; 40 participants virtually dissected a product, while the remaining 15 completed a personality test. The results of the study highlight that students explored new types of ideas during the second ideation session for all conditions and at all levels, with students having the biggest increase in embodiment variety when they dissected analogically far products. Overall, there were no differences in design variety between students in the dissection condition and the incubation condition. This study highlights how incubation can impact design variety and calls for further investigation of the interaction between product dissection and incubation.

Idea generation with Technology Semantic Network

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Serhad Sarica ◽  
Binyang Song ◽  
Jianxi Luo ◽  
Kristin L. Wood
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Semantic Network ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Semantic Distance ◽  
The Core ◽  
Design Idea ◽  
Design Ideas ◽  
Design Ideation

Abstract There are growing efforts to mine public and common-sense semantic network databases for engineering design ideation stimuli. However, there is still a lack of design ideation aids based on semantic network databases that are specialized in engineering or technology-based knowledge. In this study, we present a new methodology of using the Technology Semantic Network (TechNet) to stimulate idea generation in engineering design. The core of the methodology is to guide the inference of new technical concepts in the white space surrounding a focal design domain according to their semantic distance in the large TechNet, for potential syntheses into new design ideas. We demonstrate the effectiveness in general, and use strategies and ideation outcome implications of the methodology via a case study of flying car design idea generation.

A Comparison of Variety Metrics in Engineering Design

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Henderson ◽  
Kevin Helm ◽  
Kathryn Jablokow ◽  
Seda McKilligan ◽  
Shanna Daly ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Problem ◽  
Mechanical Engineering ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Solution Space ◽  
New Variety ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Correlation Analyses ◽  
Design Ideas

This paper focuses on comparing and contrasting methods for assessing the variety of a group of design ideas. Variety is an important attribute of design ideas, because it indicates the extent to which the solution space has been explored. There is a greater likelihood of successfully solving a design problem when a more diverse set of ideas is generated in the early stages of design. While there are three existing metrics for variety, it has not been established how well they correlate with each other, so it is unknown whether they provide similar assessments of variety. This uncertainty inspired our investigation of the three existing metrics and, eventually, the development of a new variety metric — all of which we compared statistically and qualitatively. In particular, 104 design ideas collected from 29 sophomore mechanical engineering students were analyzed using the existing and new variety metrics. We conducted correlation analyses to determine if the four metrics were related and to what degree. We also considered the qualitative differences among these metrics, along with where they might be used most effectively. We found varying levels of statistically significant correlations among the four metrics, indicating that they are dependent. Even so, each metric offers a unique perspective on variety and may be useful in different situations.

Comparison and Extension of Novelty Metrics for Problem-Solving Tasks

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tyler A. Johnson ◽  
Avery Cheeley ◽  
Benjamin W. Caldwell ◽  
Matthew G. Green
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Engineering Design ◽  
Physical Principle ◽  
Levels Of Abstraction ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Working Principle ◽  
Abstract Ideas ◽  
Using Data

Shah’s metrics for measuring ideation effectiveness have been used extensively by the engineering design community to quantify the value of designed concepts. Shah measures novelty as the infrequency of an idea relative to a set of ideas. Vargas-Hernandez extended this novelty metric using partial genealogy trees to consider the frequency of ideas that share the same working principle. These genealogy trees capture differences between individual ideas organized by the following levels of abstraction: physical principle, working principle, and embodiment. Shah’s and Vargas-Hernandez’s metrics both require that all ideas be described at the lowest level (embodiment). This approach excludes ideas that are described at higher levels of abstraction. This paper proposes a new novelty metric that extends Vargas Hernandez’s metrics by including the higher levels of the genealogy trees, allowing abstract ideas to be properly evaluated. This paper compares the newly proposed novelty metric to Shah’s and Vargas Hernandez’s metrics using data from a previous study. The study required participants to perform problem-solving tasks in which they submitted a textual list of ideas for how to solve general day-to-day problems. The proposed novelty metric addresses limitations of the previous metrics when applied to the abstract ideas in the data set and meets established metric requirements. The proposed metric also broadens Shah’s metric in a similar manner as Vargas Hernandez but extends it to capture the entire genealogy tree rather than a subset of the tree.

Design Fixation and Its Mitigation: A Study on the Role of Expertise

2013 ◽  
Vol 135 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vimal K. Viswanathan ◽  
Julie S. Linsey
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Problem ◽  
Solution Space ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Design Fixation ◽  
Novice Designers ◽  
Novel Products

Engineering idea generation plays a vital role in the development of novel products. Prior studies have shown that designers fixate to the features of example solutions and replicate these features in their ideas. This type of fixation acts as a major hindrance in idea generation, as it restricts the solution space where designers search for their ideas. Building upon the study by Linsey et al. [2010, “A Study of Design Fixation, Its Mitigation and Perception in Engineering Design Faculty,” ASME Trans. J. Mech. Des., 132, 041003], this study hypothesizes that designers fixate to example features and this fixation can be mitigated using certain defixation materials including alternate representations of the design problem. To investigate this, the experiment conducted by Linsey et al. [2010] with engineering design faculty is replicated with novice designers. Participants generate ideas for a design problem in three groups: one group working with a fixating example, a second group working with the same example along with alternate representations of the design problem and a control group. The obtained results show that both the novice designers and design faculty fixate to the same extent, whereas the defixation materials have differential effect on the two groups. This result indicates that design researchers need to be very careful in developing methods and guidelines that are formulated and tested with studies on novice designers. The effectiveness of such measures may vary with the level of expertise of the designer.

When Theater Comes to Engineering Design: Oh How Creative They Can Be

2017 ◽  
Vol 139 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ferris M. Pfeiffer ◽  
Rachel E. Bauer ◽  
Steve Borgelt ◽  
Suzanne Burgoyne ◽  
Sheila Grant ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Self Efficacy ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Control Groups ◽  
Engineering Mathematics ◽  
Design Students ◽  
Creative Self ◽  
And Control ◽  
Experimental Group ◽  
Capstone Design

The creative process is fun, complex, and sometimes frustrating, but it is critical to the future of our nation and progress in science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM), as well as other fields. Thus, we set out to see if implementing methods of active learning typical to the theater department could impact the creativity of senior capstone design students in the bioengineering (BE) department. Senior bioengineering capstone design students were allowed to self-select into groups. Prior to the beginning of coursework, all students completed a validated survey measuring engineering design self-efficacy. The control and experimental groups both received standard instruction, but in addition the experimental group received 1 h per week of creativity training developed by a theater professor. Following the semester, the students again completed the self-efficacy survey. The surveys were examined to identify differences in the initial and final self-efficacy in the experimental and control groups over the course of the semester. An analysis of variance was used to compare the experimental and control groups with p < 0.05 considered significant. Students in the experimental group reported more than a twofold (4.8 (C) versus 10.9 (E)) increase of confidence. Additionally, students in the experimental group were more motivated and less anxious when engaging in engineering design following the semester of creativity instruction. The results of this pilot study indicate that there is a significant potential to improve engineering students' creative self-efficacy through the implementation of a “curriculum of creativity” which is developed using theater methods.

scholarly journals Doodling as Self-Expression: Building Self-Efficacy in Normally Functioning Adults

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Journey Coward
Keyword(s):  
Self Efficacy ◽  
Self Care ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Educational Tool ◽  
Inclusion Criteria ◽  
Adult Individual ◽  
Specific Performance ◽  
Study Support ◽  
Convenience Sampling ◽  
Creative Self

While previous studies identify doodling as a useful educational tool, this study sought to determine if doodling can build creative or emotional self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is an individual’s belief in their own capacity to express behaviors necessary to attain specific performance goals. The current study also sought to determine if doodling can be a form of self-care. Research collected was quantitative and qualitative using surveys to measure both creative and emotional self-efficacy along with a doodling activity. Ten participants were recruited through convenience sampling on social media and were included in the study after meeting the inclusion criteria of identifying themselves as a normally functioning adult. Individual times spent on doodling ranged from thirty minutes to three hours. The study took place during the Covid-19 pandemic which impacted the ability to recruit volunteer participants. The researcher collected data from the Emotional Self-Efficacy Scale (ESES) and Creative Self-Efficacy Scale (CSES). The results from this study support the use of doodling in art therapy as well as its effect on an individual’s self-expression and self-efficacy. The research also explores the use of doodling as a form of self-care. Recommendations for future research include expanding the population size and variety, as well as having a facilitator present to guide and witness the process.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document