Showing papers by "Colleen M. Seifert published in 2017"

Supporting novice engineers in idea generation using Design Heuristics

Abstract: 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’ selfperceptions, 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. Introduction Engineering design has been described as a problem-solving process that “searches through a hypothetical space of many possible ideas.”[1, 2] A design process can be viewed as having a frontend and a back-end, where the front-end design is a “fuzzy” process full of ambiguity[3] that involves a series of divergent and convergent thinking episodes in order to come to a conceptual design[4]. The front-end phase includes defining problems, conducting research and design ethnography, identifying design requirements, idea generation, and initial prototyping[3, 4, 5]. Engineering curricula often focus on the “back-end” of design, where processes focus on developing, building, and testing concepts[6], potentially because these processes appear deterministic (such as optimizations). However, many crucial design decisions are made in the front-end phase[7], and skills in front-end design are necessary to successful design. This study focuses on one important stage in the front-end design: idea generation; in particular, what are strategies and tools that can be used to support front-end success in design? One of the challenges for both engineering students and practicing engineers is to develop innovative solutions to problems because innovation is necessary to solve the world’s most pressing issues.[8] As increasing technology allows engineers to learn more about existing and emerging problems, it also provides opportunities to develop solutions like never before.[9] Consequently, engineers must be successful in idea generation[8, 10] by fully exploring solution spaces through the generation of multiple and diverse ideas[11]. Considering a wide spectrum of ideas at the front end of the design process is important in order to consider strong aspects of concepts to develop while filtering out other aspects. Generating diverse ideas to consider requires divergent thinking,[4, 12] while engineering methods focus on converging on a single solution. While experienced designers appear to use strategies in their idea generation process[13, 14], novice designers may have fewer approaches to help them consider a variety of concepts. One way to assist novice engineers in idea generation is through idea generation tools. A common tool is Brainstorming, the technique of generating ideas without evaluating them, encouraging wild and exaggerated ideas, valuing quantity over quality, and considering every idea to be of equal worth[15]. Brainstorming is the most popular tool used across all disciplines as a way to generate ideas[16]. One challenge with Brainstorming, however, is that it fails to provide students direction or inspiration beyond their initial ideas. Another design tool with increasing use in engineering contexts is Design Heuristics, which are a set of 77 strategies to incorporate into product design idea generation[17]. The Design Heuristics ideation tool is derived from evidence of strategy use by engineers, and has been studied across contexts including undergraduate and graduate engineering, industrial designers, high school engineering education, and professional engineering and design practices[13]. For this study of idea generation in beginning engineers, we compare these two ideation methods to examine qualitative differences in outcomes. Background Research indicates the importance of considering multiple concepts in the early stages of design.[3] However, many engineering students do not dedicate adequate time to the idea generation process. This leads to limited consideration of alternative solutions, and can potentially decrease the chance of innovative outcomes. Further, designers often become fixated on their initial ideas, and find it difficult to think of very different concepts[18, 19]. Engineering students have been shown to struggle with fixation to a greater extent when compared to industrial design students[18]. Engineering students in particular may benefit from the use of idea generation tools to help them push beyond initial ideas to solutions outside the obvious[20]. One ubiquitous approach to idea generation across disciplines is Brainstorming, a technique originally proposed for groups to help postpone judgment of ideas, encourage wild ideas, aim for quantity over quality, and value every idea[15]. As originally proposed by Osborn), Brainstorming was developed as a technique to use with groups[15]. In practice, “brainstorming” refers to any method of idea generation where groups or individuals are instructed to generate as many different ideas as possible[21]. Engineering instructors, in many cases, encourage their students to generate ideas using “brainstorming,” but may not provide students with specific instruction on how to execute it (following Osborn). Instead, the term may be used to suggest a “natural” approach to thinking of ideas, pursuing whatever comes to mind in the moment. The expectation is often that ideas should arise without using any cognitive strategy, and without any instructions on how to ideate successfully. This lack of instruction often prevents novice engineers from considering possible strategies as they create and develop concept ideas[14]. As a result, students are less likely to recognize the large space of potential designs possible, and may not seek out tools to help them identify varied candidate designs. The instructions in Brainstorming [15] push designers to continue creating more solutions; however, they do not guide or direct towards potential solutions. This lack of direction also causes students to rely on their initial ideas[34]. Another idea generation approach is Design Heuristics, an evidence-based concept generation tool developed to help designers think systematically and intentionally about variety in idea generation[20, 22]. Collected from protocols of engineers talking aloud while creating designs, analyses of award winning products, and a case study of a long-term design project, Design Heuristics capture the cognitive “rules of thumb” used by designers to intentionally vary their set of candidate designs[23]. These strategies appear to be ones that expert designers employ automatically, without consciously deciding to do so[24]. The heuristics were individually extracted across multiple concepts from multiple designers to reflect a useful level of abstraction in describing how to alter design characteristics to create new ones[25]. The resulting set of Design Heuristics capture 77 different strategies, each of which can be applied independently or in to create new designs[26]. The set of Design Heuristics is packaged as an instructional tool for use in idea generation. A set of 77 cards includes prompts, such as “Add Motion,” as shown in Figure 1. Each prompt is a different strategy to help the designer generate a novel idea. One side of each card has a graphic demonstrating the strategy along with a written description (Figure 1). The other side includes two examples of the heuristic as employed in two existing products (Figure 1). To illustrate that each heuristic may be applied to every design problem, one of the illustrated products is always a type of chair. The other product on each card varies, demonstrating that these strategies apply across a wide range of applications and industries. While initial use is supported by the cards, it is possible that novices will eventually incorporate the heuristics they often use into their everyday design practice as they develop design expertise[11]. There are many ways that a single Design Heuristic can be applied during idea generation. Past studies have documented their use by means of a single application of one heuristic card to generate a new design, repeated use of one card to generate multiple designs, and combining multiple cards to generate an idea[20]. In addition, students have successfully transformed an existing design into a new one by applying a heuristic[27]. Design Heuristics have also been successful when used in conjunction with other idea generation strategies, such as Morphological Analysis[17]. Research on Design Heuristics has shown that engineering students at varying levels of training can learn to use the Design Heuristics cards within a short instructional session, and then go on to successfully create their own novel and diverse concepts[20]. One study of 48 first-year engineering students given different subsets of 12 Design Heuristics used Design Heuristics in over half of their created concepts for a portable solar oven[28]. Further, the concepts resulting from the application of Design Heuristics were rated by blind coders as more creative designs. Studies with more advan

Case studies of problem exploration processes in engineering design

Abstract: Looking beyond the presented problem can allow new perspectives to emerge, opening up the possibility of more varied solutions. Little research exists about how engineering designers engage in this process, which we call problem exploration. In a study with engineering students, each student talked aloud as they worked to create design solutions; next, we asked them to explain their problem focus and to define the problem they addressed in each solution. The protocols revealed multiple cognitive strategies used to structure and frame the presented problem in alternative ways. Further research is aimed at empirically-based design tools to support problem exploration in engineering design.

Design in biomedical engineering: Student applications of design heuristics as a tool for idea generation

Abstract: Creative concept generation is an important source of successful innovation; thus, techniques that support creative conceptual designs are imperative to instruction on engineering design processes. One ideation tool, Design Heuristics, was developed through empirical studies of designs by professional engineers and in award-winning products. While the Design Heuristics strategies were identified and validated in the product design space, their application in biomedical engineering spaces has not been examined. In our study, we implemented a Design Heuristics lesson during one session of a semester-long biomedical engineering design course for upper-level undergraduates. In this paper, we present an analysis of three design teams from the course to examine the applicability and impact of Design Heuristics within biomedical engineering design problems. Findings revealed that the biomedical engineering students successfully engaged in idea generation using Design Heuristics to build new biomedical engineering concepts. The findings suggest that Design Heuristics can support idea generation in biomedical engineering contexts, demonstrating the value of Design Heuristics outside of the previously-documented mechanical engineering and industrial design contexts. Introduction A primary goal of the undergraduate engineering curriculum is to support students’ development of design skills, demonstrated by the ABET requirement that students should be able to “design a system, component, or process to meet desired needs.” ABET also emphasizes that these solutions will need to be innovative to address the complex problems in the world today. Idea generation and development are important processes in design that lead to innovative outcomes and instruction using idea generation tools can increase the likelihood of students’ success in these processes. One idea generation tool, called Design Heuristics, has been shown to be beneficial to student solution processes and outcomes in engineering design courses. The focus of these studies has been on product design in mechanical and multi-disciplinary engineering and industrial design courses. However, there is potential for Design Heuristics to be applied to other engineering disciplines, such as biomedical engineering. Biomedical engineering design courses focus on medical devices, and incorporate a wide variety of expertise and engineering disciplines, including mechanical, electrical, and chemical engineering. The breadth of experience represented on a design team can help to generate innovative and diverse ideas. Biomedical engineering design courses focus on the processes of reverse engineering, problem definition and conceptualization, preliminary design, final design selection, prototyping, testing, and marketing, as well as addressing some unique biomedical focus areas such as medical device regulation. Within the field of biomedical engineering design, there has been limited discussion of how to instruct students about the idea generation process. Instruction on idea generation appears in some biomedical engineering design textbooks with an emphasis on mindset, collaboration, and versatility in idea generation, along with guidelines for facilitation. However, textbooks in biomedical engineering design provide minimal information about techniques for idea generation. Design Heuristics have been shown to be valuable in multiple product design contexts and biomedical engineering product design may also be a relevant application area. Biomedical engineering design includes device-oriented designs that require physical interactions with users, and so may benefit from generative heuristics gleaned from enduser products. In this research, we explored the extent to which biomedical engineering students were able to apply Design Heuristics during idea generation, and whether they selected Design Heuristics-driven concepts as practical concepts to take forward in their design projects. Background The consideration of multiple and diverse concepts during ideation can lead to innovative solutions. Research indicates that diverse idea generation is difficult for students, and that limited resources exist for engineering educators on how to generate innovative concepts. Common teaching methods for engineering idea generation include “brainstorming” and morphological analysis; however there is little formal idea generation instruction or systematic approaches to idea generation. Tools to facilitate idea generation include brainstorming, brainwriting, conceptual combination, Design Heuristics, IDEO Method Cards, lateral thinking, morphological analysis, Synectics, SCAMPER, and TRIZ. Each of these tools has a unique approach to guiding idea generation, varying in their focus specificity, and usability. For example, SCAMPER aids in idea generation by defining general prompts; Synectics provides general theme suggestions to define the contextual meaning of product, and brainstorming sets rules to guide a team during idea generation sessions. Design Heuristics provide “rules of thumb” to introduce variation in design based on analyses of past products. Because of the existing evidence of the applicability of Design Heuristics in product design contexts, we selected this tool for use in a biomedical engineering design course. Design Heuristics are idea generation strategies to prompt designers to explore a wide variety of ideas during idea generation, leading to more diverse and creative design concepts. Cognitive heuristics as defined in the field of psychology facilitate “best guesses” at potential solutions, and their use has been shown to support expert performance. They are heuristics rather than algorithms because they provide a suggestion towards a possible solution rather than a deterministic outcome. A specific set of 77 cognitive heuristics for product design, called Design Heuristics, have been identified in studies of expert and advanced product designers and analysis of innovative products. Each of the 77 Design Heuristics provides a different, specific prompt, and is illustrated with a graphic representation and examples of its use in specific products. The heuristics are printed on an index card that can be considered by designers to prompt ideas. On the front of each Design Heuristic card, there is a title of the strategy, a graphic image, and a description of the heuristic (Figure 1). The back of each card provides two example products where the heuristic is evident, demonstrating how the heuristic can be applied to multiple products. One of these example is always a seating device, and the other example is a consumer product, represented by a variety of products throughout the set of 77 cards. Figure 1. Design Heuristic card #50, Provide Sensory Feedback. (a) Front features the Design Heuristic strategy and description with image and text. (b) Back features two examples of how the heuristic can be applied. For example, the Design Heuristic, Provide sensory feedback, prompts the designer to consider how to provide feedback to the user when they interact with the product. For example, in designing a prosthetic, this Design Heuristic could be applied by adding vibrating sensations for the user whenever their prosthetic touches a surface. By pushing the designer to consider aspects of designs noted by other designers, Design Heuristics can help novice engineers broaden their conceptions of the design space, consider non-obvious ideas, and generate multiple, diverse concepts. In a series of studies, the Design Heuristics cards have been empirically validated as effective in helping students generate conceptual solutions to address design problems. Designs developed with the cards were non-obvious and distinct, and led to diverse and creative ideas in later stages of the design process. In studies with first-year mechanical engineering students, design concepts generated with Design Heuristics were more original than those generated without Design Heuristics, which were often replications of known ideas or simply minor changes to existing products. Another study engaged first-year engineering students by teaching Design Heuristics as (1) a concept generation technique and (2) a concept transformation technique. More variety of solution concepts was observed in design concepts generated with the Design Heuristics. In a study with upper-level engineering students working in teams, concepts generated using Design Heuristics were observed as more practical, and were maintained from initial ideation through the final project design. In this study of teams working on different design projects, Design Heuristics were found to be applicable across a diverse range of problems. In sum, Design Heuristics have been established as a beneficial tool to assist mechanical engineers in generating diverse and create ideas. In the present study, we sought to determine whether this instructional method would also benefit students in the domain of biomedical engineering design. Research Methods Research Questions The focus of this study was to investigate whether and how Design Heuristics may assist students in generating design ideas in the context of biomedical engineering problems. We were also interested in how students developed their initial ideas as they refined and developed their concepts. Our project was guided by the following research questions:  How are Design Heuristics applied in concepts generated by biomedical engineering students?  To what extent are heuristic-driven ideas present in concepts considered worthwhile and selected to take forward in the design processes? Course Context and Participants The goal of the biomedical engineering design course at a large Midwestern university was to design, test, and build medical devices for stakeholders such as university departments, clinicians, and industry. Skills developed through the course included problem definition, concept gener

Cultural Differences in Aesthetic Preferences: Does Product-to-Context Match Matter?

Abstract: Western cultures focus on salient objects and use categorization for purposes of organizing the environment (an analytic view), whereas, East Asians cultures focus more holistically on relationship...