Creativity in Design Teams: The Influence of Personality Traits and Risk Attitudes on Creative Concept Selection

Concept selection is recognized as a crucial component of the design process that largely involves informal group discussions within design teams. However, little is known about what factors affect the selection or filtering of creative ideas during this process. This is problematic because in order for innovation to occur, individuals must first identify and select the creative concepts developed in the early stages of design. However, prior research has shown that individuals tend to select conventional alternatives during this process due to the inherent risk associated with creative concepts. Therefore, the current study was developed to understand how personality traits, risk attitudes, and idea generation abilities impact the promotion or filtering of creative ideas in a team setting. The results from our empirical study with engineering students reveal that teams who have higher levels of conscientiousness, agreeableness, and tolerance for ambiguity are more prone to select novel concepts. In addition, the results revealed that the teams who generate creative ideas did not necessarily select creative ideas during concept selection. These results add to our understanding of team-based decision making during concept selection and allow us to provide guidelines for increasing the flow of creative ideas through this process

How Engineering Teams Select Design Concepts: A View Through the Lens of Creativity

While concept selection is recognized as a crucial component of the engineering design process, little is known about how concepts are selected during this process or what factors affect the selection of creative concepts. To fill this void, content analysis was performed on student engineering design team discussions during a concept selection task. Our results indicate that student design teams typically focus on the technical feasibility of concepts during the selection process. However, teams that identified useful elements of ideas or continued to generate new ideas during this process had a tendency towards selecting creative ideas. These results add to our understanding of team-based decision-making during concept selection and highlight the need for encouraging creativity throughout the concept selection process

The Impact of Virtual Product Dissection Environments on Student Design Learning and Self-Efficacy

While recent design efforts have lead to the development of virtual dissection tools that reduce the costs associated with physical dissection, little is known about how these virtual environments impact student design learning. Therefore, the current study was developed to address this knowledge gap through two investigations: (1) an experimental study that examines the impact of virtual dissection on design learning, knowledge retention, and self-efficacy, and (2) a qualitative study focused on student experiences during virtual dissection. These studies show that physical dissection leads to a higher electro-mechanical self-efficacy gain compared to virtual dissection; however, the method of dissection did not affect student learning. We use these findings to provide recommendations for the use of product dissection in design education

The Preferences For Creativity Scale (PCS): Identifying The Underlying Constructs Of Creative Concept Selection

The current study was developed to investigate the factors that affect preferences for creativity during the engineering design process through the development of a psychometric scale, the Preferences for Creativity Scale (PCS). This study also explores the impact of student designer\u27s scores on the PCS to their behavior during a creative concept selection activity

Choosing Creativity: The Role of Individual Risk and Ambiguity Aversion on Creative Concept Selection 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 and their inadvertent bias against creativity. However, little is actually known about what factors attribute to the promotion or filtering of these creative concepts during concept selection. To address this knowledge gap, an exploratory study was conducted with 38 undergraduate engineering students. This study was aimed at investigating the impact of individual risk aversion, ambiguity aversion, and student educational level on the selection and filtering of creative ideas during the concept selection process. The results from this study indicate that an individuals ability to generate creative ideas is not significantly related to their preference for creative ideas during concept selection, but individual risk aversion and ambiguity aversion are significantly related to both creative concept selection and creative idea generation. Our results also revealed that first and third-year students’ creative ability are affected differently by varying levels of tolerance for ambiguity. These results highlight the need for a more directed focus on creativity in engineering education in both concept creation and concept selection. These results also add to our understanding of creativity during concept selection and provide guidelines for enhancing the design process

A Study of Product Dissection’s Impact on Engineering Creativity

Designers typically interact with products during the early stages of design to gain an understanding of the solution space. However, few studies have been conducted to understand how these practices affect idea generation which thereby limits our understanding of the utility of these methods. Therefore, the current study was conducted to understand designer-product interactions in order to develop recommendations for their use during the design process

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. Iden-tifying 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 activ-ities 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 ac-tivities 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 dissec-tion, 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

Abandoning Creativity: The evolution of creative ideas in engineering design course projects

Creativity training has been widely integrated into engineering education as a means to prepare students to be an innovative force in design industry. However, much of this research has focused on training students to be creative idea generators, with limited attention to what happens after this generation. Thus, the current study was developed to understand how creative ideas are promoted or filtered throughout the design process in order to focus our educational efforts. In order to accomplish this, an 8-week study with 136 engineering students was conducted. Our results point to the reduction in creativity throughout the design process and student abandonment of novel concepts. We also expose the influence of the design task on student creativity

A Study of Sustainability Adoption Trends in the Transportation Market

Due to an increasing concern for sustainability, automobile manufacturers have been introducing hybrid variants of popular vehicles in an attempt to reduce the environmental impact of vehicles. However, it is still unclear how this ‘hybridization’ of popular car models affects the overall success of the vehicle. This paper seeks to address these gaps in knowledge by implementing a demand modeling approach, game theory framework, and a technology forecasting model. In the demand model, it was found that the percent of hybrid cars sold, the year and the model of the car are significant predictors of the total sales. In the game theory model, all possible scenarios suggest that an increase in hybrid sales would encourage market share growth. Lastly, using the technology forecasting model, S-curves were generated to show how the energy impact score (EIS) of automobile engines decreases over time as technology improves, and provide justification for the investment in hybrid engine development

The Impact of Virtual Dissection on Engineering Student Learning and Self-Efficacy

Product dissection activities are widely practiced in engineering education and recent efforts have sought to develop and utilize virtual dissection tools, little data exists on how these tools impact the learning process. Therefore, this study investigates the impact of virtual dissection on student learning and self-efficacy to understand the effects of virtual dissection tools for enhancing engineering instruction