Showing papers by "Colleen M. Seifert published in 2014"

Teaching Creativity in Engineering Courses.

Abstract: Background The ability to engage in a creative process to solve a problem or to design a novel artifact is essential to engineering as a profession. Research indicates a need for curricula that enhance students' creative skills in engineering. Purpose Our purpose was to document current practices in engineering pedagogy with regard to opportunities for students' creative growth by examining learning goals, instructional methods, and assessments focused on cognitive creative skills. Design/Method We conducted a critical case study of engineering pedagogy at a single university with seven engineering courses where instructors stated the goal of fostering creativity. Data included instructor and student interviews, student surveys, and course materials. For qualitative analysis, we used frameworks by Treffinger, Young, Selby, and Shepardson and by Wiggins and McTighe. Results One aspect of creativity, convergent thinking (including analysis and evaluation), was well represented in the engineering courses in our case study. However, instruction on generating ideas and openness to exploring ideas was less often evident. For many of the creative skills, especially those related to divergent thinking and idea exploration, assessments were lacking. Conclusions An analysis of pedagogy focused on goals, instruction, and assessments in the engineering curriculum revealed opportunities for growth in students' creative skill development. Designing assessments that motivate students to improve their creative skills and to become more aware of their own creative process is a key need in engineering pedagogy.

Can experienced designers learn from new tools? A case study of idea generation in a professional engineering team

Abstract: Generating novel ideas is a challenging part of engineering design, especially when the design task has been undertaken for an extended period of time. How can experienced designers develop new ideas for familiar problems? A tool called Design Heuristics provides strategies that support engineers in considering more, and more different, concepts during idea generation. Design Heuristics have been shown to help novice engineers create a set of more diverse and creative candidate concepts. In this case study, we extended this approach to a group of professional engineers who had worked on a specific product line for many years. In a workshop format, a small group of engineers worked with the heuristics in two separate sessions and generated ideas collaboratively. Video recordings were analyzed to reveal how the heuristics were used to stimulate new designs for their product line. We found that Design Heuristics bring order in ideas and elaboration on ideas, perhaps through coordinating effort on idea evalua...

A Case-Study Analysis of Design Heuristics in an Upper-Level Cross-Disciplinary Design Course

Abstract: 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. Introduction Successful concept generation has been identified as the source of successful innovations, but engineering students often struggle to generate multiple and diverse ideas to fully explore the solution space. This challenge is due, in part, to a lack of instruction on systematic approaches to idea generation and innovative thinking. Instructors might encourage students to “brainstorm” to generate ideas, but may not know or provide their students with specific instructions about how to do so. This lack of formal idea generation instruction leaves students to their own devices, and therefore, novice designers often fail to employ specific design strategies as they initiate and develop concept ideas. Existing research has uncovered two specific cognitive challenges associated with concept generation in engineering: (1) engineers form an early attachment to their initial ideas and stop considering alternatives; and (2) engineers are unable to break away from known examples or solutions. Ullman et al. found that engineers tended not to explore multiple ideas and instead only pursued a single proposed design they quickly settled upon. Ball et al. found that engineers tended to adhere to their original idea, even if this solution had serious flaws. The first cognitive difficulty, as identified above, has been termed “fixation,” because the designer fixates on and persistently pursues an initial idea instead of spending time and effort searching for a better alternative. The second cognitive difficulty is also a form of fixation – fixation on an existing example – and was highlighted in Jansson and Smith’s work where designers were shown an existing example of an unsatisfactory product and were made aware of its flaws. When they were asked to design an alternative solution, the designers frequently included elements of the provided example, along with the example’s flaws. Therefore, these designers performed more P ge 2.23.2 poorly than the control group of designers who had not seen the initial example. This research shows that, without an intervention, designers are often blocked by their own initial ideas as well as any other existing ideas related to the design task. As a result, designers tend to stop short of generating a diverse set of novel concepts. Several methods for concept generation have been published and used in design courses; however, only one has been systematically derived from engineering design and designers’ processes and empirically validated in scientific studies—Design Heuristics. Design Heuristics were developed through analyses of innovative product designs and protocol studies with expert industrial designers and engineers. Additional studies verified their success in guiding solution space exploration by both student and expert engineers, and industrial designers. The 77 distinct Design Heuristics are packaged as easy-to-use prompts to guide the generation of new concepts. Each Design Heuristic can be used in multiple ways to initiate a new concept or to transform an existing concept. Design Heuristics provide specific strategies that can produce multiple, diverse, and creative concepts for any type of product design problem. While Design Heuristics have been rigorously derived from and validated for individual ideation, their impact on student teams throughout a design process has not been researched. This paper presents a study of how eight student teams in an upper-level design course applied Design Heuristics throughout their design processes. We examine the relationship between Design Heuristics use in early design phases to student design team outcomes, and the applicability of Design Heuristics across different problem contexts. Our analysis also searched for patterns in the design teams’ general approaches to the design process, including patterns of synthesis, transformation, and abstraction, and how these approaches affected concept development. Design Heuristics Design Heuristics are strategies to encourage a wide exploration of a variety of ideas during the ideation phase. In psychology, a cognitive heuristic is a “rule of thumb” used to make a decision or judgment. Cognitive heuristics do not necessarily lead to definite or explicit solutions; instead, they describe specific methods to make “best guesses” at potential solutions. Psychological research has shown that the efficient use of domain-specific heuristics distinguishes experts from novices; experts use cognitive heuristics constantly and effectively, while novices do not. Applying the idea of cognitive heuristics within the domain of product design, research with designers and engineers resulted in a specific set of 77 “rules of thumb” for design, called Design Heuristics. The Design Heuristics have been empirically demonstrated as effective in helping designers generate possible conceptual solutions to address their design problems. Design Heuristics can be applied multiple times during ideation and in various combinations to produce a wide range of novel concepts. They guide designers and engineers to generate non-obvious, distinct ideas, therefore producing a larger set of diverse ideas from which to choose. A complete list of the empirically-derived Design Heuristics is shown in Figure 1 below.

Design Heuristics: An Evidence-Based Tool to Improve Innovation

Abstract: Dr. Yilmaz is an Assistant Professor of Industrial Design who teaches design studios and lecture courses on developing creativity and research skills. For her research, she investigates design approaches and ideation, creative processes, and cross-disciplinary design team dynamics. She is the author of more than 20 peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings. She also serves on review, advisory, and scientific boards of various journals and conferences. Her current research focuses on identifying impacts of different factors on ideation of designers and engineers, developing instructional materials for 77 cards, and designing innovation workshops for students without design or engineering background and teaching them design thinking methodologies. She received her PhD degree in Design Science in 2010 from University of Michigan. She is also a faculty in Human Computer Interaction Graduate Program and a research faculty in Center for e-Design.