A Variety Metric Accounting for Unbalanced Idea Space Distributions

AbstractProving the effectiveness of an idea generation method is key to its acceptance in an industrial and academic environment. This necessitates the development of a set of widely accepted metrics covering the different aspects on which idea generation methods can be characterized. This paper gives an overview of the existing metrics, and demonstrates a number of shortcomings in the variety metric, such as not accounting for the fairness of the distribution of ideas over nodes on an abstraction level. A level-based, correctly normalized variety metric, based on the Shannon entropy, is proposed which is shown to resolve the identified issues

Assessment of BioPattern in Novel Idea Generation for Bio-Inspired Design

BioPattern is a novel ideation tool for Bio-Inspired Design, built based on TRIZ, SAPPhIRE, and pattern language. It consists of an ontology, known as pattern-based ontology, and a sustainability evaluation, known as Ideal Windows. However, this framework has not been tested yet. Therefore, this article is to present the results and analysis of the case study conducted to assess this biomimicry framework. Two different groups of students, Creative & Innovation class (controlled group) and Integrated Engineering Design class (experimental group), are asked to generate innovative ideas where the experimental group employed BioPattern as the ideation tool. It is found that the level of innovation for the inventive ideas generated by the experimental group is much higher compared to that of the controlled group. Based on the inventive ideas produced by the experimental group, BioPattern is found to be efficient in ideation, able to generate effective solution, the problem-solution pairs of the ontology are adequate, and the biological solutions suggested are transferable as technological solutions. It can be concluded that BioPattern is able to bridge the biology-engineering gap

Comparing novelty of designs from biological-inspiration with those from brainstorming

This research aims to understand the significance of biological-analogies in fostering novelty by comparing biological-analogies with other design methods for idea generation. Among other design methods, brainstorming was chosen here as benchmark. Four studies were conducted to compare: (i) the levels of abstraction at which concepts were ideated using biological inspiration (represented using biocards) with that using traditional brainstorming; and (ii) the novelty of concepts produced by using these two design methods. Concepts produced in these studies were evaluated for levels of abstraction at which they were ideated, average novelty, and proportion of high-novelty concepts. Results suggest that concepts generated using biocards were ideated at higher abstraction levels than those using brainstorming, but neither were at the highest abstraction levels. The average novelty of concepts produced using biocards was found to be greater than that using brainstorming; however, no statistically significant difference was found in the proportion of high-novelty concepts. We suspect the lack of biological knowledge and cultural difference among the subjects involved in our studies as the two reasons behind the results. The results demonstrate that the design methods substantially influence the novelty of concepts generated, while indicating the need for better training in effective use of biological-analogies

Influences of feedback interventions on student concept generation and development practices

Design teaching in many disciplines relies on feedback as a primary way for students and instructors to communicate. Our work focused on identifying feedback types in three different design disciplines (dance choreography, industrial design, and mechanical engineering) and analyzing how those feedback types encouraged students to take convergent or divergent paths with their design ideas. We then compared feedback types and encouragement of convergence or divergence across the three disciplines. Our findings showed many common types of feedback used across the three disciplines, regardless of variance in context and expectations. However, the findings also revealed a high frequency of feedback suggesting convergence or not pushing in either direction. While design processes aim to identify the most promising solution through a series of convergence steps, divergence is equally critical throughout the entire process, and this work suggests a consideration of when and how to integrate feedback supporting divergence throughout design processes

The relationship between personal intrinsic factors towards a design problem and the degree of novelty and circularity

The aim of this work is to determine how personal intrinsic factors towards a design problem are related to novelty and circularity. A deeper understanding of this relationship will be a valuable aid when it comes to making an adequate selection of design teams. The factors studied are the level of the designer's motivation, relevance, knowledge and affinity with regard to the design problem. To this end, a study was conducted with 35 novice designers, organised in groups of between two and five members. Each group had to propose a conceptual solution to two different design problems. Novelty was assessed using the SAPPhIRE causality model (which stands for State–Action–Part–Phenomenon–Input–oRgan–Effect) and the Circular Economy Toolkit was applied to measure circularity. The results show that as motivation, level of knowledge, perception of relevance and affinity for the problem increase, the solution displays greater novelty and less circularity, although for circularity, the difference is not statistically significant.Funding for open access charge: CRUE-Universitat Jaume

An Exploratory Study of the Influence of Design Process Ordering on the Requirement Generation of Novice Designers

In engineering design, the classic methodology of the design process encourages the problem definition to be developed prior to beginning concept generation. It is shown, however, that the problem definition and solutions must coevolve throughout the design process, each phase building off information learned from the other to develop in an iterative process. The current structuring of these steps leads to a disconnect between a final solution and the initial problem definition (often presented in the form design requirements). This research explores a methodology for improving the connection of design requirements to those final solutions through manipulation of the ordering of the design process. An experimental study was conducted to assess 104 engineering students’ requirements lists for a given design problem as they are influenced by developing requirements first versus sketching an initial concept prior to requirement generation. The control group was asked to generate requirements prior to sketching. The “sketch first” group was then asked to use their sketch to assist their requirement generation. Additionally, a second “sketch first” group was tested to determine the influence of being given explicit instructions to identify features of their sketch to further improve the requirements generated. It was found that this feature identification aspect of sketching leads to improved requirements lists based on the metrics of requirement quantity, variety, typology, completeness, and novelty, while simply changing the order of requirement generation and sketching had little or no effect. This indicates that the design process should explicitly connect a solution to the design requirements through formal instruction in order to improve the designers’ understanding of their goal

An Experimental Study Exploring the Influence of Different Representation of Requirements on Idea Generation

This research aims to understand the influence of different representations of requirements on idea generation concerning the quantity, addressment, sketch detail, novelty, and variety of conceptual sketches. To solve design problems, engineers use the needs, desires, and wishes of stakeholders. The requirements document the targets of a project because it contains constraints and design criteria. Also, requirements can be used to track project progress. In essence, specifications are the raison d\u27être of any engineering project. While there is research studying the effect of requirements on the conceptual sketch, little study has focused on the impact of different requirement representations (contextual) on solution development. An experimental study was conducted with 52 undergraduate mechanical engineering students in their fourth year. Two design problems were formulated with three different representations: a problem statement with embedded requirements (Problem Statement), a problem statement and a traditional requirement list (Traditional), and a problem statement with contextualized scrum stories (Contextual). For each design problem, each student received different representations of requirements. They were given 15 minutes each to read and sketch concept solutions. These were then analyzed using quantity, addressment, sketch detail, novelty, and variety. It was found that the use of contextualized scrum story representations had a statistically significant impact on the conceptual sketch in terms of novelty of solution fragments and requirements addressed. Further, there was no significant change in variety, sketch detail, or quantity. The contextualized representation did positively affect all metrics but the sketch detail. Another finding was that there was no relationship between the amount of sketch generated (quantity) and addressment, novelty, variety, or sketch detail. Therefore, it is recommended that requirements be molded as scrum stories in projects. Also, this study has shown that implementation of the agile process in hardware development is not hindered by the contextual representation of requirements

Towards a guided framework for innovative engineering through the generation and evaluation stages of concept design

This work proposes a framework of concept generation and evaluation that takes into consideration the benefit of creativity and innovation in current market trends. By educating engineers in how to increase creativity in concept design and assess it quantitatively, the next generation of designers will be a step ahead of the market. This research begins with an in-depth survey of current creativity assessment methods in engineering in order to determine where the limitations currently lie in this field of study. The limitations discovered based on this unique analysis were used as motivation for the development of the proposed creativity assessment method. Specifically, we introduce a set of metrics that break down concepts to their component and subfunction level to assess the novelty and quality of component solutions – called the Comparative Creativity Assessment (CCA) Method. Secondly, we break down market-tested innovative products to isolate innovation information to utilize in concept generation inspiration – called the Repository of Innovative Products (RIP). Finally, revisions to the initial CCA method and RIP are proposed and analysis of past data results are compared to the new revised results. Revisions to the CCA method include additional metrics that factor in interaction effects from function pairing and component assemblies deemed innovative as well as eliminate evaluator subjectivity in the analysis. Observations from the experiments conducted are presented in a Lessons Learned chapter