Anthony Nix

Towards a Repository of Innovative Products to Enhance Engineering Creativity Education

Innovative products are the holy grail for consumer product manufacturers. The essence of what makes a product innovative and in-demand by consumers is a nebulous subject. The research presented in this paper charts the initial steps toward computer-directed innovation in product design. A method for identifying the innovative subsystems in a product and archiving that information is formulated. The innovation information, if archived in a design repository, can support automatic concept generation that is biased toward innovative concepts. Products featured in published lists of innovative products were reverse engineered to expose the component and functional relationships and to analyze where the innovation of the product was most prevalent. A function subtraction method based on difference rewards is used to isolate innovation functions and components in order to populate a Repository of Innovative Products (RIP). The goal behind this research is to develop a method to analyze innovative products such that they may aid in the innovation of future ideas outputted by the Design Repository. This methodology will be used in undergraduate design classes to teach how to factor in creativity and innovation in the early stages of engineering concept design.Copyright

Evaluating TRIZ as a Provider of Provocative Stimuli

The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (known by its Russian acronym TRIZ) is used across the globe to help engineers working on product design and development. In previous papers the authors developed a Function-Based TRIZ method and began a validation process. A single innovative feature was identified in a sample of innovative products, and these features were traced backwards on the Function-Based TRIZ matrix. The Function-Based TRIZ matrix was deemed successful in cases where any inventive principle suggested by the matrix could have produced the innovative feature. During this process, the authors observed that no matter which principle was used, some mental leap was needed to apply it. Additionally, many different inventive principles can lead to the same concept. This paper examines a new hypothesis: that the provocative stimulus presented by any randomly selected inventive principle facilitates concept generation just as effectively as using the historical contradiction matrix to guide inventive principle selection. This paper presents a study on the benefits of using the TRIZ contradiction matrix to select the “correct” principles during concept generation. During this study, participants were asked to come up with concepts using one of two TRIZ matrices: the real one that contains historical knowledge from an extensive patent search, or a randomly populated one. The results of this exercise were then examined using modified versions of two concept evaluation metrics set forth by Shah: quantity and variety. This paper offers two contributions to the field. The first is a step toward understanding the role and importance of conflict mappings in TRIZ and TRIZ-like problem-solving methodologies. The second is a method for evaluating process variety (as opposed to outcome variety) when TRIZ is used to generate ideas.© 2012 ASME

The Search for Innovation Styles

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test is known to be a quick and easy way to build good team dynamics. However the workplace is not always built around four person teams that you can easily change based on individual personalities. Research has shown that the various MBTI personalities associate with different learning styles. This gives reason to believe that different individual designers may synthesize data and conceptualize ideas differently in a design environment. If this is true, designers may need a customizable environment or they may need to explore different ways to achieve their potential. This paper examines how individuals with different MBTI personality types take in and view information during the conceptualization stages of product design and whether the way information is inputed is vital to an innovative product design.Copyright

Investigating Divergent Thinking in Creativity Exercises Through Alternative Uses Tests

Creativity is a valuable skill for today’s workplace and one that universities should be emphasizing in the classroom. Teaching creativity usually involves the completion of “creative exercises” that help an individual understand how to think outside the box. Often individuals that are considered creative “practice” creativity on a daily basis, either through their own will or through their occupation, which increases their creative potential. Creativity is shown to be divided into multiple aspects, one of which is divergent thinking. This study examines participants’ divergent thinking skills over nine weeks as they perform a simple design task each week. The participants are split into two groups as they perform an alternative uses test on a weekly basis. Each week a new item is presented and the results are collected and entered in a database. The number of entries per card is analyzed to determine if the participants have increased their divergent thinking ability throughout the nine weeks.Copyright