scholarly journals The Impacts of Design Heuristics on Concept Generation for a COVID-19 Brief

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 6103
Author(s):  
Xiaoneng Jin ◽  
Hua Dong ◽  
Mark Evans
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
Conceptual Design ◽  
Visual Stimuli ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Digital Innovation ◽  
Design Heuristics

Design heuristics (DHS) as a tool can help boost designers’ creativity in early conceptual design phases. We have developed a set of DHS for digital innovation (DHS10). There are numerous studies on DHS impacts/outcomes in the recent years. However, little research has been conducted to identify whether DHS has lasting benefits on designers’ ideation performance. This paper explores whether DHS10 can help designers achieve more creative ideas based on different design briefs, and if DHS has lasting impacts on or benefits for students. An empirical study was conducted with two groups (i.e., 32 students who learned DHS10 five weeks ago, and 24 students who studied DHS10 instantly). They were asked to address an open-ended design brief on COVID-19 and generate as many innovative ideas as possible. The results suggest DHS has impacts on students who learned DHS just now and five weeks ago. The effect is stronger on those who just learned DHS10. We suggest that DHS10 be provided for ideation as it provides texts and visual stimuli for designers. DHS10 also has the potential to help students understand digital innovation and generate ideas accordingly.

scholarly journals How do designers generate new ideas? Design heuristics across two disciplines

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seda Yilmaz ◽  
Shanna R. Daly ◽  
Colleen M. Seifert ◽  
Richard Gonzalez
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Strategies ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Design Concepts ◽  
Design Heuristics ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Industrial Designers ◽  
Protocol Study ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Design Heuristic

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.

scholarly journals An Immersive VR Application for Interactive Product Concept Generation and Qualitative Evaluation

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Noon ◽  
Ruqin Zhang ◽  
Eliot Winer ◽  
Jim Oliver ◽  
Brian Gilmore ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Design ◽  
Computer Aided Design ◽  
Systems Design ◽  
Qualitative Evaluation ◽  
Assessment Tools ◽  
Design Phase ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Early Assessment ◽  
Element Analysis ◽  
Conceptual Design Phase

Currently, new product concepts are evaluated by developing detailed virtual models with Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools followed by evaluation analyses (e.g., finite element analysis, computational fluid dynamics, etc.). Due to the complexity of these evaluation methods, it is generally not possible to model and analyze each of the ideas generated throughout the conceptual design phase of the design process. Thus, promising ideas may be eliminated based solely on insufficient time to model and assess them. Additionally, the analysis performed is usually of much higher detail than needed for such early assessment. By eliminating the time-consuming CAD complexity, engineers could spend more time evaluating additional concepts. To address these issues, a software framework, the Advanced Systems Design Suite (ASDS), was created. The ASDS incorporates a PC user interface with an immersive virtual reality (VR) environment to ease the creation and assessment of conceptual design prototypes individually or collaboratively in a VR environment. Assessment tools incorporate metamodeling approximations and immersive visualization to evaluate the validity of each concept. In this paper, the ASDS framework and interface along with specifically designed immersive VR assessment tools such as state saving, dynamic viewpoint creation, and animation playback are presented alongside a test case example of redesigning a Boeing 777 in the conceptual design phase.

Mining Functional Model Graphs to Find Product Design Heuristics With Inclusive Design Illustration

2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shraddha Sangelkar ◽  
Daniel A. McAdams
Keyword(s):  
Data Mining ◽  
Functional Model ◽  
Inclusive Design ◽  
Generation Process ◽  
Graph Visualization ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Product Representation ◽  
Graph Data ◽  
Design Heuristics ◽  
Functional Models

Engineering design heuristics offer the potential to improve the design process and resultant designs. Currently, heuristics are empirically derived by experts. The goal of this paper is to automate the heuristics generation process. Functional modeling, a well-established product representation framework, is applied in this research to abstract the intended functionality of a product. Statistically significant heuristics, extracted from a database of functional models, serve as design suggestions or guidelines for concept generation. The heuristics can further be applied to automate portions of the concept generation process. Prior research efforts in automated concept generation rely heavily on the design repository. The repository needs to be appended for broader categories of design problems, and, at the same time, a tool for quick analysis of the expanded repository is required. An automated heuristic extraction process has the capability to efficiently mine the updated repositories and find new heuristics for design practice. A key objective of this research is to develop design heuristics applicable in the diverse and challenging domain of inclusive design. The research applies graph theory for mathematical representation of the functional model, graph visualization for comprehending graphs, and graph data mining to extract heuristics. The results show that the graphical representation of functional models along with graph visualization allows quick updates to the design repository. In addition, we show that graph data mining has the capability to efficiently search for new design heuristics from the updated repository.

The Part Count Tool (PACT) for Concept Selection

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tarang Parashar ◽  
Katie Grantham Lough ◽  
Robert B. Stone
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Design ◽  
Manufacturing Cost ◽  
Design Phase ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Product Concept ◽  
Design Concepts ◽  
Conceptual Design Phase ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
Component Type ◽  
The Cost

This paper presents a part count tool that automates the consideration of manufacturing cost during the conceptual design phase by predicting part count for a particular product concept. With an approximate number of parts per product in the conceptual design phase, the designer can estimate the cost associated with the product. On the basis of the cost, the designer can make changes according to budget requirements. The part count tool will also aid in ranking the design concepts by number of components for a product. This tool utilizes existing automated concept generation algorithms to generate the design concepts. It extracts the available data from the Missouri S&T Design Repository to compute an average number of parts per component type in the repository and then calculates an average part count for new concepts. This data can subsequently be used by designers to estimate product cost. The part count tool also uses an algorithm to determine how to connect two non compatible components through the addition of mutually compatible components. While emphasis is placed on the average parts per product in evaluating designs, the overall functional requirement of the product is also considered.

Collaborative Sketching With skWiki: A Case Study

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Senthil Chandrasegaran ◽  
Sriram Karthik Badam ◽  
Zhenpeng Zhao ◽  
Niklas Elmqvist ◽  
Lorraine Kisselburgh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Design ◽  
Collaborative Design ◽  
Design Research ◽  
Research Tool ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Computational Tools ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Collaborative Exploration ◽  
Collaborative Sketching

Sketching for conceptual design has traditionally been performed on paper. Recent computational tools for conceptual design have leveraged the availability of hand-held computing devices and web-based collaborative platforms. Further, digital sketching interfaces have the added advantages of storage, duplication, and sharing on the web. We have developed skWiki, a tool that enables collaborative sketching on digital tablets using a web-based framework. We evaluate skWiki in two contexts, (a) as a collaborative ideation tool, and (b) as a design research tool. For this evaluation, we perform a longitudinal study of an undergraduate design team that used skWiki over the course of the concept generation and development phase of their course project. Our analysis of the team’s sketching activity indicated instances of lateral and vertical transformation between participants, indicating collaborative exploration of the breadth and depth of the design space. Using skWiki for this evaluation also demonstrated it to be an effective research tool to investigate such collaborative design processes.

Design Ideator: A Conceptual Design Toolbox

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Narsale ◽  
Y. Chen ◽  
M. Mohan ◽  
Jami J. Shah
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Design ◽  
Computer Aided Design ◽  
Analogical Reasoning ◽  
Divergent Thinking ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Problem Formulation ◽  
Knowledge Bases ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Aided Design

Computer tools for embodiment and detailed engineering design (computer-aided design (CAD)) evolved rapidly in the past 35 years and are now pervasive throughout the industry. But todays commercial CAD is geometry-centric, not appropriate for early stages of design when detailed geometry and dimensions are not known. This paper describes a framework and a set of interconnected tools for conceptual design. In this system, a broad range of intuitive and experiential concept generation methods have been operationalized and implemented as databases, artifact repositories, knowledge bases, and interactive procedures to promote divergent thinking. The so-called “Design Ideator” includes methods for flexible and dynamic design problem formulation, re-formulation, and restructuring in the form of hierarchical and re-configurable morphological charts. This tool has been continuously enhanced through three phases of user studies and feedback. The main contributions of this work are as follows. First, this research has created a holistic framework with interlaced knowledge bases from a wide range of methods, as opposed to past research that have relied on single experiential only method. Second, we have formulated algorithms to support several intuitive methods, such as contextual shifting, analogical reasoning, provocative stimuli, and combinatorial play.

scholarly journals NEW DESIGN HEURISTICS IN THE DIGITAL ERA

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 607-616
Author(s):  
X. Jin ◽  
H. Dong
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Design ◽  
Digital Design ◽  
Design Stage ◽  
Step Process ◽  
Design Fixation ◽  
Design Heuristics ◽  
Digital Era ◽  
Conceptual Design Stage ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Function Design

AbstractIn the digital era, products’ forms do not necessarily follow their function. Design fixation may happen when a designer attempts to generate diverse concepts. New design heuristics for digital design were extracted to support designers in the early conceptual design stage. Ten design heuristics were extracted from 998 RedDot award-winning concept designs (2013-2017) through a five-step process. It was preliminarily tested by four practitioners and proved to have positively influenced their conceptual design.

Facilitating Tacit Knowledge Capture and Reuse in Conceptual Design Activities

1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel J. Yen ◽  
Renate Fruchter ◽  
Larry J. Leifer
Keyword(s):  
Tacit Knowledge ◽  
Conceptual Design ◽  
Explicit Knowledge ◽  
Design Reuse ◽  
Design Rationale ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Design Decisions ◽  
Requirements Specifications ◽  
Computer Mediated ◽  
Design Activities

Abstract This paper discusses the approach and analysis of an empirical study that supports the hypothesis that concept generation and development occur most frequently in informal media where design capture tools are the weakest. This statement has strong implications for the capture and reuse of design knowledge because conceptual design generates the majority of initial ideas and directions that guide the course of the project. Many important decisions are made along with rationales that support these decisions, but since these rationales are expressed in design activities such as brainstorming sessions and conversations, the design rationale is rarely captured and the knowledge is lost. While traditional product documentation captures explicit knowledge such as requirements, specifications, and design decisions, often the contextual or tacit knowledge of the design group is lost. The paper concludes with a description of a computer-mediated system, called “Recall”, that addresses the results of our findings by providing a means of capturing and indexing informal media to facilitate design reuse.

Investigation of Hand Motion Language in Shape Conceptualization

2004 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Imre Horva´th
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
Conceptual Design ◽  
Shape Design ◽  
Initial Shape ◽  
Consumer Durables ◽  
Hand Motion ◽  
Designed Experiments ◽  
Computer Aided ◽  
Design Systems

This paper summarizes the results of an empirical study concerning the use of hand motions as one of the input mechanisms of a multi-modal interface of computer aided conceptual design systems for initial shape design of consumer durables. A hand motion language (HML) has been developed and used in designed experiments to describe simple, compound and hybrid shapes. The subjects were asked to reconstruct the presented shapes by sketching on paper. Comprehension of the hand motion language has been evaluated in terms of fidelity and efficiency. The results clearly indicate the potentials of a HML in shape conceptualization. In addition, the experiments revealed several new issues related to the application of the hand motion language in a multi-modal interface.

Comparing Ideation Techniques for Beginning Designers

2016 ◽  
Vol 138 (10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shanna R. Daly ◽  
Colleen M. Seifert ◽  
Seda Yilmaz ◽  
Richard Gonzalez
Keyword(s):  
Design Problem ◽  
Morphological Analysis ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
First Year ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Design Heuristics ◽  
Engineering Design Problem ◽  
Consensual Assessment Technique ◽  
Initial Idea

Concept generation techniques can help to support designers in generating multiple ideas during design tasks. However, differences in the ways these techniques guide idea generation are not well understood. This study investigated the qualities of concepts generated by beginning engineering designers using one of three different idea generation techniques. Working individually on an open-ended engineering design problem, 102 first year engineering students learned and applied one of three different ideation techniques—design heuristics, morphological analysis, or individual brainstorming (using brainstorming rules to generate ideas working alone)—to a given design problem. Using the consensual assessment technique, all concepts were rated for creativity, elaboration, and practicality, and all participants' concept sets were rated for quantity and diversity. The simplest technique, individual brainstorming, led to the most concepts within the short (25 minute) ideation session. All three techniques produced creative concepts averaging near the scale midpoint. The elaboration of the concepts was significantly higher with design heuristics and morphological analysis techniques, and the practicality was significantly higher using design heuristics. Controlling for number of concepts generated, there were no significant differences in diversity of solution sets across groups. These results demonstrate that the use of design heuristics does not limit the creativity of ideation outcomes, and helps students to develop more elaborate and practical ideas. Design heuristics show advantages in the initial idea generation phase for beginning engineering students. These findings point to specific strengths in different ideation techniques, and the value of exposing beginning designers to multiple techniques for idea generation.

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