Shanna R. Daly

A Comparison of Cognitive Heuristics Use between Engineers and Industrial Designers

The present study focuses on an exploration and identification of design heuristics used in the ideation process in both industrial designers and engineering designers. Design heuristics are cognitive strategies that help the designer generate novel design concepts. These cognitive heuristics may differ based on the design problem, the context defined, and designers’ preferences.

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

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 evaluation, increasing capacity to improve the ideas of others, and facilitating interaction between participants. This case study shows using Design Heuristics can assist even expert engineers to increase the variety of concepts generated, resulting in a larger set of ideas to consider.

A Socio-Technical Perspective on Interdisciplinary Interactions During the Development of Complex Engineered Systems

This study investigates interdisciplinary interactions that take place during the research, development, and early conceptual design phases in the engineering of large-scale complex engineered systems (LaCES) such as aerospace vehicles. These interactions that occur throughout a large engineering development organization, become the initial conditions of the systems engineering process ultimately leading to the development of a viable system. This paper summarizes some of the challenges and opportunities regarding social and organizational issues that emerged from a qualitative study using ethnographic and survey data. The analysis reveals several socio-technical couplings between the engineered system and the organization that creates it. Survey respondents noted the importance of interdisciplinary interactions and their benefits to the engineered system as well as substantial challenges in interdisciplinary interactions. Noted benefits included enhanced knowledge and problem mitigation and noted obstacles centered on organizational and human dynamics. Findings suggest that addressing the social challenges may be a critical need in enabling interdisciplinary interactions during the development of LaCES.

Design Heuristics in Innovative Products

Current design theory lacks a systematic method to identify what designers know that helps them to create innovative products. In the early stages of idea generation, designers may find novel ideas come readily to mind, or may become fixated on their own or existing products. This may limit the ability to consider more and more varied candidate concepts that may potentially lead to innovation. To aid in idea generation, we sought to identify “design heuristics,” or “rules of thumb,” evident in award-winning designs. In this paper, we demonstrate a content analysis method for discovering heuristics in the designs of innovative products. Our method depends on comparison to a baseline of existing products so that the innovative change can be readily identified. Through an analysis of key features and functional elements in the designs of over 400 award-winning products, 40 heuristic principles were extracted. These design heuristics are outlined according to their perceived role in changing an existing product concept into a novel design, and examples of other products using the heuristics are provided. To demonstrate the ease of use of these design heuristics, we examined outcomes from a classroom study and found that concepts created using design heuristics were rated as more creative and varied. The analysis of changes from existing to innovative products can provide evidence of useful heuristic principles to apply in creating new designs. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4032219]

Comparing Ideation Techniques for Beginning Designers

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. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4034087]

Facilitating teachers’ development of nanoscale science, engineering, and technology content knowledge

Abstract As nanoscale science, engineering, and technology (NSET) becomes more integrated into precollege science curricula, it is crucial for teachers to develop coherent understandings of science principles (e.g., the structure of matter, size and scale, forces and interactions, and size-dependent properties) that allow them to coordinate these understandings from the macro- to the nanoscale. Furthermore, as teachers acquire new NSET content knowledge through professional learning opportunities, it is incumbent upon NSET educators to understand their developing content knowledge. To this end, we report results from a study in which we used a pre-/post-/delayed-posttest design to examine the change in 24 secondary (grades 7–12) science teachers’ NSET content knowledge as a result of their participation in a year-long professional development program that consisted of a 2-week intensive course and academic year follow-up activities. Participants showed significant gains from pretest to posttest and significant gains on the delayed test compared to the pretest. We also present trends that emerged in teachers’ open-ended responses that provided deeper insight into teachers’ NSET content knowledge. Finally, we discuss issues related to the assessment of teachers’ NSET content knowledge as well as the design of NSET professional development for teachers.

Ideation Variety in Mechanical Design: Examining the Effects of Cognitive Style and Design Heuristics

This paper examines ideation variety as a measure of the extent to which a design solution space has been explored. We investigated one cognitive factor (cognitive style) and one cognitive intervention (Design Heuristics cards) and their relationships with students’ ideation variety, both actual and perceived. Cognitive style was measured using the Kirton Adaption-Innovation inventory (KAI), while variety scores were computed using the metrics of Nelson et al. [18] and Shah et al. [20]; an adapted form of these metrics was also explored. A group of 132 sophomore mechanical engineering students generated ideas for two design problems (one with and one without Design Heuristics cards). They sketched and described their conceptual solutions in words and assessed the variety of their solutions after ideation. Linear statistical techniques were applied to explore the relationships among the variety scores, students’ self-assessments of variety, cognitive style, quantity of ideas, and the presence of the Design Heuristics intervention. Our results show statistically significant correlations between students’ perceived variety and their variety performance, and between cognitive style and both variety performance and student perceptions.Copyright

Work in progress - the undergraduate general chemistry laboratory as an informal learning environment: a phenomenographical study

Goals and characteristics of the undergraduate general chemistry laboratory and the science museum have many similarities, yet studies show that poor attitudes are associated with the laboratory and positive attitudes are associated with informal learning environments such as the science museum. Using phenomenography, this study defines the possible attitudes of undergraduate students relating to both environments, and categorizes the components of the environments that affect these attitudes. Comparing attitude-affecting components of the laboratory to the science museum yields information on areas of the laboratory that could benefit from the incorporation of informal characteristics, improving student attitudes. This work in progress describes preliminary results on student attitudes in the museum and what components have an effect on their attitudes

Using design strategies from microfluidic device patents to support idea generation

Microfluidics has been an important method in providing answers to a wide variety of research questions in chemistry, biochemistry, and biology. Microfluidic designers benefit from instructional textbooks describing foundational principles and practices in developing microfluidic devices; however, these texts do not offer guidance about how to generate design concepts for microfluidic devices. Research on design in related fields, such as mechanical engineering, documents the difficulties engineers face when attempting to generate novel ideas. For microfluidic device designers, support during idea generation may lead to greater exploration of potential innovations in design. To investigate successful idea generation in microfluidics, we analyzed successful microfluidic US patents, selecting those with the key word “microfluidic” over a 2-year period. After analyzing the features and functions of 235 patents, we identified 36 distinct design strategies in microfluidic devices. We document each strategy, and demonstrate their usefulness in a concept generation study of practitioners in microfluidic design. While some of the identified design strategies may be familiar to microfluidic designers, exposure to this large set of strategies helped participants generate more diverse, creative, and unique microfluidic design concepts, which are considered best practices in idea generation.

Investigating Student Motivation and Performance in Electrical Engineering and Its Subdisciplines

Factors influencing choice of major in electrical engineering and later curricular and professional choices are investigated. Studies include both quantitative and qualitative analyses via student transcripts, surveys, and focus groups. Student motivation for choosing an electrical engineering major and later subdiscipline in the field is interpreted through expectancy-value theory, where primary factors of strong perceived value of future professional opportunities and strong influence of course instructors are identified. Performances in select required electrical engineering courses appear to serve as predictors for student choice of subdiscipline emphasis. In contrast, participation in student professional activities does not show statistically significant correlations with subdiscipline. Curricular and professional choices appear to be explained by expectancy-value theory with inclusion of socializers. The findings suggest that early and integrative exposure of all electrical engineering technical areas, including high-quality teaching, may provide an optimal basis for students to make future decisions on academic path and participation in professional activities.