Teaching Creative Process across Disciplines

While there is great interest in higher education about teaching creative process, there have been relatively few studies of how courses can facilitate the development of creative skills. The goal of this study was to document how college instructors structure courses intended to develop students’ creative processes. The study data included interviews from instructors and students using a critical case sample of fifteen courses at a single U.S. University. A qualitative analysis of the transcripts yielded a set of 14 pedagogical elements appearing across courses. Common elements were open‐ended projects and skill‐building activities, and less frequently, risk taking experiences and self‐reflection. The sample included undergraduate courses in engineering, education, the liberal arts, and the arts, and the elements observed were often shared across courses from different disciplines. These findings provide a diverse set of pedagogical approaches and opportunities for building creative process skills within undergraduate courses.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/148345/1/jocb158.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/148345/2/jocb158_am.pd

Organizational Influences on Interdisciplinary Interactions during Research and Design of Large-Scale Complex Engineered Systems

The design of large-scale complex engineered systems (LaCES) such as an aircraft is inherently interdisciplinary. Multiple engineering disciplines, drawing from a team of hundreds to thousands of engineers and scientists, are woven together throughout the research, development, and systems engineering processes to realize one system. Though research and development (R&D) is typically focused in single disciplines, the interdependencies involved in LaCES require interdisciplinary R&D efforts. This study investigates the interdisciplinary interactions that take place during the R&D and early conceptual design phases in the design of LaCES. Our theoretical framework is informed by both engineering practices and social science research on complex organizations. This paper provides preliminary perspective on some of the organizational influences on interdisciplinary interactions based on organization theory (specifically sensemaking), data from a survey of LaCES experts, and the authors experience in the research and design. The analysis reveals couplings between the engineered system and the organization that creates it. Survey respondents noted the importance of interdisciplinary interactions and their significant benefit to the engineered system, such as innovation and problem mitigation. Substantial obstacles to interdisciplinarity are uncovered beyond engineering that include communication and organizational challenges. Addressing these challenges may ultimately foster greater efficiencies in the design and development of LaCES and improved system performance by assisting with the collective integration of interdependent knowledge bases early in the R&D effort. This research suggests that organizational and human dynamics heavily influence and even constrain the engineering effort for large-scale complex systems

Evidence-based design heuristics for idea generation

How do product designers create multiple concepts to consider? To address this question, we combine evidence from four empirical studies of design process and outcomes, including award-winning products, multiple concepts for a project by an experienced industrial designer, and concept sets from 48 industrial and engineering designers for a single design problem. This compilation of over 3450 design process outcomes is analyzed to extract concept variations evident across design problems and solutions. The resulting set of patterns, in the form of 77 Design Heuristics, catalog how designers appear to introduce intentional variation into conceptual product designs. These heuristics provide ‘cognitive shortcuts’ that can help designers generate more, and more varied, candidate concepts to consider in the early phases of design

How do designers generate new ideas? Design heuristics across two disciplines

Research supports the central role cognitive strategies can play in successful concept generation by individual designers. Design heuristics have been shown to facilitate the creation of new design concepts in the early, conceptual stage of the design process, as well as throughout the development of ideas. However, we know relatively little about their use in differing disciplines. This study examined evidence of design heuristic use in a protocol study with 12 mechanical engineers and 12 industrial designers who worked individually to develop multiple concepts. The open-ended design problem was for a novel product, and the designers’ sketches and comments were recorded as they worked on the problem for 25 min and in a retrospective interview. The results showed frequent use of design heuristics in both disciplines and a significant relationship to the rated creativity of the concepts. Though industrial designers used more heuristics in their concepts, there was a high degree of similarity in heuristic use. Some differences between design disciplines were observed in the choice of design heuristics, where industrial designers showed a greater emphasis on user experience, environmental contexts, and added features. These findings demonstrate the prevalence of design heuristics in individual concept generation and their effectiveness in generating creative concepts, across two design domains

Overcoming Design Fixation in Idea Generation

Ideally, designers move past existing ideas to create novel designs. But designers often experience “fixation,” where new ideas are similar to existing designs. An example concept in a brief, or early attachment to one’s initial ideas, can limit the range of designs considered. This research study explored the use of “Design Heuristics,” to overcome fixation in a design education setting. Design Heuristics are a set of prompts intended to point designers toward different types of concepts. The 77 prompts are derived from empirical studies of designers, and have been shown to be effective in developing design capability. In the study, novice engineering design students first used brainstorming, and continued to generate more ideas using Design Heuristics . The results showed that ideas created during brainstorming were more similar to initial ideas. Concepts created with Design Heuristics were judged less similar and more creative. This suggests fixation on initial examples can be mitigated by using tools like Design Heuristics during design, which contributes to how educators can help students develop ideation skills

Design Heuristics in ideation across engineering and industrial design domains

How do designers explore a design space to generate diverse solutions? This work focuses on the identification of design heuristics used in the ideation process in the domains of industrial design and engineering design. Design heuristics are cognitive strategies applied to a design problem to help designers create novel solutions. In a think-aloud protocol, engineers and industrial designers with varying levels of experience were asked to develop multiple concepts for a novel design problem. The results show evidence of frequent heuristic use, and that heuristics are effective in generating diverse, creative, and practical concepts, which, as a result, may stimulate higher-quality designs

A Case-Study Analysis of Design Heuristics in an Upper-Level Cross-Disciplinary Design Course

A Case-Study Analysis of Design Heuristics in an Upper-Level Cross-Disciplinary Design CourseDesign Heuristics is a design ideation tool drawn from empirical evidence including observationsof professional designers and analyses of award-winning products. Design Heuristics cardsprovide strategies for generating alternative designs during concept ideation. The motivation forthis research study was to investigate how Design Heuristics were utilized by novice designersworking in cross-disciplinary teams. We were interested in exploring the practical elementssupported by heuristic use and the degree to which heuristic use made an impact throughout thedesign processes of cross-disciplinary design teams. In our investigation, we also saw successesand challenges in the teams’ design processes, including patterns in the way team membersdeveloped, transferred, and synthesized their concepts. These patterns highlight importantfeatures of successful team concept generation and development.Using a case-study framework, we followed the design processes of eight cross-disciplinarystudent design teams enrolled in a semester-long upper-level design course. The teamsindividually chose their design projects based on their interests and preliminary research. In aclass session at the beginning of the term, the teams were taught how to use the DesignHeuristics cards, and were then asked to use the cards in the preliminary concept generationphase of their design projects. We collected copies of these preliminary concepts, and continuedto collect data in the form of reports throughout the semester at the Proposal milestone, theProgress Report milestone, and the Final Report milestone of the course. Using the data collectedat these three stages, we created “timelines” detailing each team’s progression through the designprocess. We analyzed these timelines for evidence of heuristic use that was present in the initialconcepts and carried through the design process to the final design. In performing this analysis,we also noticed patterns in the synthesis of concepts at various phases in the design process. Wealso saw how the teams transferred ideas when moving from one design process phase toanother.Our analysis revealed that all eight teams showed strong evidence of heuristic use in their latterdesigns following their initial heuristic-driven ideation session. Of these, seven teams showedstrong evidence of heuristic use in their final designs and prototypes. Because all eight teamsstudied were working on different design problems, our results demonstrate that heuristics workeffectively across different design contexts. This suggests that the Design Heuristics cardssupport practicality in a variety of design contexts and that heuristics can be utilized by novicedesigners and design teams to generate innovative solutions to a range of design problems.Our analysis also uncovered patterns in the way the teams progressed with their ideas throughthe design process. Seven of the eight teams studied showed evidence of concept synthesis intheir design processes. All eight teams showed evidence of direct transfer between designprocess phases at some point, meaning that they took their ideas, concepts, or prototypes fromone phase of the design process and transferred them directly and without abstraction to anotherphase. Only three teams showed evidence of transformation between design process phases atsome point, meaning that they displayed some abstraction when moving their ideas, concepts, orprototypes from one phase to another. These findings suggest opportunities for further researchand exploration of Design Heuristics and team concept development processes

Comparison of design Approaches between Engineers and Industrial Designers

Design Heuristics are an idea generation tool based on empirical evidence from successful designs. The heuristics serve as cognitive “shortcuts” that encourage exploration of novel directions during concept generation. Design Heuristics were identified from an analysis of hundreds of innovative products and from studies of expert engineering and industrial designers. The research reported in this paper examines the utility of Design Heuristics instruction in two different classroom settings with engineering and industrial design students. The aim was to test whether design heuristics can play a useful role in creating new designs and overcoming fixations in the design process. Twenty novice industrial design students and forty-eight novice engineering students were given a short design task along with a set of twelve Design Heuristics. The heuristics were illustrated on cards describing their use and two example images of products using each heuristic. The students participated in a short instructional session on the use of heuristics, and were asked to generate concepts for a given problem. The results showed that the Design Heuristics helped the students to generate more diverse candidate concepts, and that the concepts they produced were creative and complex. Students sometimes applied multiple heuristics within a single design, leading to more complex and well-developed solutions

Supporting idea generation with design tools: nesting design heuristics within morphological analysis

As some design problems are complex, generating concepts for a complete artefact may be overwhelming for designers, especially for novices. Students often learn to use morphological analysis (MA) to decompose a problem into subcomponents, allowing them to focus on designing for more specific functions. However, generating new ideas for subcomponents remains a challenge for novices. In this study, the authors investigated an educational method combining the morphological analysis approach with a tool designed to facilitate the generation of novel, differing ideas called design heuristics (DH). The results demonstrate that adding design heuristics within morphological analysis supported students in building upon their ideas to generate concepts. These findings contribute to the knowledge about how to facilitate idea generation through supporting tools in design pedagogy and practice