Scarlett R. Miller

The Impact of Example Modality and Physical Interactions on Design Creativity

Interacting with example products is an essential and widely practiced method in engineering design, yet little information exists on how the representation (pictorial or physical) or interaction a designer has with an example impacts design creativity. This is problematic because without this knowledge we do not understand how examples affect idea generation or how we can effectively modify or develop design methods to support example usage practices. In this paper, we report the results of a controlled study with first year engineering design students (N = 89) developed to investigate the impact of a designers interaction with either a two-dimensional (2D) pictorial image or a three-dimensional (3D) product (through visual inspection or product dissection activities) and the resulting functional focus and creativity of the ideas developed. The results of this study reveal that participants who interacted with the physical example produced ideas that were less novel and less functionally focused than those who interacted with the 2D representation. Additionally, the results showed that participants who dissected the product produced a higher variety of ideas than those that visually inspected it. These results contribute to our understanding of the benefits and role of 2D and 3D designer-product interactions during idea development. We use these findings to develop recommendations for the use of designer-product interactions throughout the design process.

The Impact of Product Dissection Activities on the Novelty of Design Outcomes

This paper explores the effect of a product dissection activity on design novelty in engineering design. Novelty is an important aspect of design ideation effectiveness. Therefore, identifying the factors that influence novelty will expand the understanding of the design process, as well as improve design pedagogy. Previous studies have found that participation in product dissection activities positively impacted creativity, but did not study creativity in terms of novelty, making it unclear if product dissection activities will impact the novelty of generated designs. Furthermore, although product dissection has been studied in team environments, individual factors such as the personality traits of the team members was not explored for their effect on the exposure to the dissection activity, and hence the effect on the novelty of generated designs. Our empirical experimentation showed that extraverted participants had a higher level of exposure to the body design dissection activity and developed more novel ideas than those who were not extraverts. These results contribute to our understanding on how team-based dissection activities influence the novelty of generated designs in an engineering design setting.Copyright

Designing public safety mobile applications for disconnected, interrupted, and low bandwidth communication environments

Public Safety emergency communication systems are crucial to effective incident and disaster response. Lack of situational awareness and communications are of the most cited factors that hamper Public Safetys ability to make critical decisions. In partnership with the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (DHS S&T), MIT Lincoln Laboratory (MIT LL) developed the Next-Generation Incident Command System (NICS) to improve collaborative situational awareness. NICS is a reliable, distributed, and scalable architecture that enables a common situational awareness picture to enhance collaboration. The NICS user interface is web-based and Public Safety is increasingly adopting mobile devices, which are likely to operate in disconnected, interrupted, low-bandwidth environments. To address these issues, this paper will describe a Public Safety mobile application based upon feedback from Public Safety personal. Due to the strong open-source development community and API flexibility, the Android operating system was selected for development. Development of the native Android application was driven by popular NICS features and Public Safety feedback. Foremost, the application was required to provide and display geolocation information, enabling basic situational awareness. In addition to geolocation, the application enables users to report incidents, broadcast messages, and transmit images. These functions and their designs were driven by interviews with Public Safety personnel from different organizations (law enforcement, fire, etc.). Usability testing with Public Safety personal was conducted. Users envision that the application will enhance the situational awareness capability for mobile Public Safety personnel while laying the foundation for future work leveraging mobile technologies. Based on this testing and lessons learned from development, a set of Public Safety mobile application design considerations were developed.

My Idea Is Best! Ownership Bias and its Influence on Engineering Concept Selection

Concept selection is considered one of the most crucial components of the engineering design process because the direction of the final design is largely determined at this stage. One of the most widely utilized techniques for filtering designs during this process involves informal review meetings where team members identify the designs that most closely satisfy the design goals. While this is often seen as an efficient process, factors such as ownership bias, or an unintentional preference for an individuals’ own ideas, and team member personality attributes may impact an individual’s decision-making process. However, few studies have explored the impact of these factors on concept selection. Therefore, an empirical study was conducted with 37 engineering students in order to investigate the effect of these attributes on the selection or filtering of design concepts in engineering education. The results from this study show that personality impacts the proportion of ideas selected, and that male students tend to select more of their own ideas (ownership bias) than their female counterparts who more often select their team member’s concepts. These results add to our understanding of the factors that impact the team concept selection process and provide empirical evidence of the occurrence of ownership bias in engineering design education.Copyright

The Role of Individual Risk Attitudes on the Selection of Creative Concepts in Engineering Design

While creativity is often seen as an indispensable quality of engineering design, individuals often select conventional or previously successful options during the concept selection process due to the inherent risk associated with creative concepts. Surprisingly, prior research has shown that this preference for conventional design alternatives is often done in an unconscious manner and is attributed to people’s inadvertent bias against creativity. While we know that designers may prematurely filter out creative ideas, little is actually known about what factors attribute to the promotion or filtering of these creative concepts during concept selection. The current paper describes an empirical study conducted with 19 first-year engineering students aimed at investigating the impact of individual risk aversion and ambiguity aversion on the selection and filtering of creative ideas during the concept selection process. The results from this study indicate that individual risk attitudes are related to both creative ability and creative concept selection. However, an individual’s ability to generate creative ideas was found to be unrelated to their preference for creative ideas during concept selection. These results add to our understanding of creativity during concept selection and provide guidelines for enhancing the design process to encourage design creativity.Copyright

Searching for Inspiration: An In-Depth Look at Designers Example Finding Practices

Designers frequently use examples during the design process as a way to provide a visual framework, allow for re-interpretation and allow for evaluation of design ideas. Although the use of examples is an important part of the design process, little is known about how designers retrieve these examples or the characteristics of the example set designers collect for a given project. Knowledge of this behavior is important, as research has shown that using examples too similar to the design problem or too familiar to the designer can cause design fixation and hinder creativity. Therefore, the current study was conducted to provide insights into these example retrieval processes by monitoring 18 professional designers during a 90-minute design task complemented by surveys and interviews for an in-depth understanding of user behavior. We relate our results to research on design fixation and provide implications for the development of example finding tools.Copyright

Exploring the Utility of Product Dissection for Early-Phase Idea Generation

Product dissection is a tool widely used in industry and academia as a means to understand components of existing products and identify opportunities for design. Dissection activities have the potential to impact design creativity because dissection is performed in the early phases of design, which is arguably the most influential phase of the design process. However, researchers have only just begun to explore the relationship between dissection and creativity, and thus little research to date has identified how variations in dissection activities impact creativity. Therefore, in this paper we respond to this research gap by presenting the results of a controlled experiment developed to understand how the type and number of products dissected and the structure and medium of the dissection task (electronic versus physical) impacts creativity. Our quantitative findings (from ANOVAs) are paired with qualitative analysis (interview results) to provide rationale for our results and insights into their cognitive underpinnings. The results from this study indicate that the structure of the dissection activity, the medium of dissection, and the number of products dissected impacts the variety of the generated concepts while the analogical distance and number of products impacts design novelty. These findings are used to develop recommendations for the alteration of dissection methods for inspiring creative thought in engineering design.

Visual inspection or product dissection? The impact of designer-product interactions on engineering design creativity

Designers commonly interact with products in the early phases of design in order to understand the solution space and gain inspiration for new designs. Although designer-product interaction methods such as visual inspection and product dissection are recognized as a pivotal component of the engineering design process, little data is available on how these practices affect idea generation or when these activities are most useful for inspiring creative thought. Therefore, the current study was developed to understand the impact of these activities on creative idea generation. During our controlled study, fifty-nine undergraduate engineering students were instructed to either visually inspect or physically dissect an example milk frother and then generate ideas for a new, innovative design. These concepts were then evaluated for their novelty, variety, quality and quantity. Our analysis (ANOVA) revealed that participants who physically dissected the example frother produced ideas that were more novel but of lower quality than those that simply inspected the frother. Our results provide insights on the impact of designer-product interactions on creativity and we use these findings to develop recommendations for the use and alterations of these practices for improving creativity in engineering design.Copyright

Mitigating design fixation effects in engineering design through product dissection activities

Design fixation plays an important role in design idea generation, and has been found to be complex in its definition and implications. Identifying the factors that influence fixation is crucial in understanding how to improve design pedagogy and mitigate fixation effects. One way to potentially mitigate fixation is through product dissection activities as this activity has been shown to increase creativity and design exploration in engineering design. However, since product dissection has not been studied in terms of design fixation, it is unclear if, or how, this type of activity influences fixation. In addition, although prior work studied product dissection in a team environment, it did not study how individual factors such as personality attributes influence one’s involvement, or exposure to the dissection. This is an important factor to study in order to understand how team-based dissection activities influence design fixation because the participation of each team member can be affected by factors such as personality traits. Therefore, this study explores the interaction between product dissection, personality traits, and design fixation in an engineering design class setting. It was found that design fixation was indeed impacted by extraversion and conscientiousness personality traits when adjusting for semester standing and exposure to the dissection activity. These findings implicate personality in the product dissection activity, as well as suggest product dissection as a way to mitigate design fixation. By understanding these interactions, the overall design process can be enhanced, as well as our understanding of design cognition.

The Impact of Team-Based Product Dissection on Design Novelty

Although design novelty is a critical area of research in engineering design, most research in this space has focused on understanding and developing formal idea generation methods instead of focusing on the impact of current design practices. This is problematic because formal techniques are often not adopted in industry due to the burdensome steps often included in these methods, which limit the practicality and adoption of these methods. This study seeks to understand the impact of product dissection, a design method widely utilized in academia and industry, on design novelty in order to produce recommendations for the use or alterations of this method for supporting novelty in design. To investigate the impact of dissection, a study was conducted with 76 engineering students who completed a team-based dissection of an electric toothbrush and then individually generated ideas. The relationships between involvement in the dissection activity, the product dissected, the novelty and quantity of the ideas developed were investigated. The results reveal that team members who were more involved in the dissection activity generated concepts that were more novel than those who did not. In addition, the type of the dissected product also had an influence on design novelty. Finally, a positive correlation between the number of ideas generated and the novelty of the design concepts was identified. The results from this study are used to provide recommendations for leveraging product dissection for enhancing novelty in engineering design education and practice.