Idea generation with Technology Semantic Network

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Serhad Sarica ◽  
Binyang Song ◽  
Jianxi Luo ◽  
Kristin L. Wood
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Semantic Network ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Semantic Distance ◽  
The Core ◽  
Design Idea ◽  
Design Ideas ◽  
Design Ideation

Abstract There are growing efforts to mine public and common-sense semantic network databases for engineering design ideation stimuli. However, there is still a lack of design ideation aids based on semantic network databases that are specialized in engineering or technology-based knowledge. In this study, we present a new methodology of using the Technology Semantic Network (TechNet) to stimulate idea generation in engineering design. The core of the methodology is to guide the inference of new technical concepts in the white space surrounding a focal design domain according to their semantic distance in the large TechNet, for potential syntheses into new design ideas. We demonstrate the effectiveness in general, and use strategies and ideation outcome implications of the methodology via a case study of flying car design idea generation.

Categorization of Information Loss During the Dissemination of Design Ideas

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Zhao ◽  
Conrad S. Tucker
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Information Source ◽  
Information Loss ◽  
Design Solution ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Comprehensive Review ◽  
Engineering Design Process ◽  
Design Idea ◽  
Design Ideas

Information is transferred through a process consisting of an information source, a transmitter, a channel, a receiver and its destination. Unfortunately, during different stages of the engineering design process, there is a risk of a design idea or solution being incorrectly interpreted due to the nonlinearity of engineering design. I.e., there are many ways to communicate a single design idea or solution. This paper provides a comprehensive review and categorization of the possible sources of information loss at different stages of the engineering design process. Next, the authors present an approach that seeks to minimize information loss during certain stages of the engineering design process. The paper i) explores design process and dissemination methods in engineering design; ii) reviews prior work pertaining to these stages of the engineering design process and iii) proposes an information entropy metric that designers can utilize in order to quantify information loss at different stages of the engineering design process. Knowledge gained from this work will aid designers in selecting a suitable dissemination solution needed to effectively achieve a design solution.

A Novel Method for Providing Global Assessments of Design Concepts Using Single-Word Adjectives and Semantic Similarity

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher A. Gosnell ◽  
Scarlett R. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Semantic Similarity ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Concept Selection ◽  
Single Word ◽  
Design Concepts ◽  
Rating Process ◽  
Novel Method ◽  
Design Idea ◽  
Gold Standards

Engineering design idea-generation sessions often result in dozens, if not hundreds, of ideas. These ideas must be quickly evaluated and filtered in order to select a few candidate concepts to move forward in the design process. While creativity is often stressed in the conceptual phases of design, it receives little attention in these later phases — particularly during concept selection. This is largely because there are no methods for quickly rating or identifying worthwhile creative concepts during this process. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to develop and test a novel method for evaluating the creativity and feasibility of design concepts and compare this method to gold standards in our field. The SCAT method employed in this paper uses word selections and semantic similarity to quickly and effectively evaluate candidate concepts for their creativity and feasibility. This method requires little knowledge of the rating process by the evaluator. We tested this method with 10 engineering designers and three different design tasks. Our results revealed that SCAT ratings can be used as a proxy for measuring design concepts but there are modifications that could enhance its utility. This work contributes to our understanding of how to evaluate creativity after idea generation and provides a framework for further research in this field.

Design Ideation Through Speculative Fiction: Foundational Principles and Exploratory Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 143 (8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maulik C. Kotecha ◽  
Ting-Ju Chen ◽  
Daniel A. McAdams ◽  
Vinayak Krishnamurthy
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Engineering Design ◽  
User Interfaces ◽  
Divergent Thinking ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Speculative Fiction ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Practical Case ◽  
Generation Process ◽  
Design Ideation

Abstract The objective of this study is to position speculative fiction as a broader framework to stimulate, facilitate, and study engineering design ideation. For this, we first present a comprehensive and detailed review of the literature on how fiction, especially science fiction, has played a role in design and decision-making. To further strengthen the need for speculative fiction for idea stimulation, we further prototype and study a prototype workflow that utilizes excerpts from speculative fiction books as textual stimuli for design ideation. Through a qualitative study of this workflow, we gain insights into the effect of textual stimuli from science fiction narratives on design concepts. Our study reveals that the texts consisting of the terms from the design statement or closely related to the problem boost the idea generation process. We further discover that less directly related stimuli may encourage out-of-the-box and divergent thinking. Using the insights gained from our study, we pose critical questions to initiate speculative fiction-based design ideation as a new research direction in engineering design. Subsequently, we discuss current research directions and domains necessary to take the technical, technological, and methodological steps needed for future research on design methodologies based on speculative fictional inspiration. Finally, we present a practical case to demonstrate how an engineering design workflow could be operationalized by investigating a concrete example of the design of automotive user interfaces (automotive-UI) through the lens of speculative fiction.

Three driven approaches to combinational creativity: Problem-, similarity- and inspiration-driven

2017 ◽  
Vol 233 (2) ◽  
pp. 373-384 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ji Han ◽  
Dongmyung Park ◽  
Feng Shi ◽  
Liuqing Chen ◽  
Min Hua ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Design Process ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Creative Design ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Crucial Element ◽  
Creative Idea ◽  
Process Strategy ◽  
Design Ideas

Creativity is a crucial element of design. The aim of this study is to investigate the driving forces behind combinational creativity. We propose three driven approaches to combinational creativity, problem-, similarity- and inspiration-driven, based on previous research projects on design process, strategy and cognition. A case study involving hundreds of practical products selected from winners of international design competitions has been conducted to evaluate the three approaches proposed. The results support the three driven approaches and indicate that they can be used independently as well as complementarily. The three approaches proposed in this study have provided an understanding of how combinational creativity functions in design. The approaches could be used as a set of creative idea generation methods for supporting designers in producing creative design ideas.

Influence of Design Representation on Effectiveness of Idea Generation

2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicia L. McKoy ◽  
Noé Vargas-Hernández ◽  
Joshua D. Summers ◽  
Jami J. Shah
Keyword(s):  
Graphical Representation ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Pictorial Representation ◽  
Design Representation ◽  
Standard Set ◽  
Textual Representation ◽  
Design Idea ◽  
Design Ideas ◽  
Better Than

Abstract The issue being investigated is the role of the type of representation used for recording design ideas in idea generation techniques for conceptual design. An empirical study was conducted to test the hypothesis that graphical (pictorial) representation is better than textual (sentential) for recording of design ideas. This study used a standard set of outcome measures: fluency, quality, novelty, and variety of ideas generated by use of different representations. The expressiveness of each representation was also studied by examining the ability to convey key design information of an idea. The experiment was designed and data analyzed based on the principles of statistical DOE. The study confirms the hypothesis that graphical representation provide greater benefits for engineering design idea generation than textual representation.

Dissection Versus Incubation: The Within-Subject Effects of Product Dissection Activities on Design Variety

2019 ◽  
Vol 142 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth M. Starkey ◽  
Mohammad Alsager Alzayed ◽  
Samuel Hunter ◽  
Scarlett R. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Solution Space ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Personality Test ◽  
Educational Tool ◽  
Incubation Condition ◽  
Undergraduate Engineering ◽  
Design Ideas

Abstract Product dissection is a popular educational tool in engineering design due to its ability to help students understand a product, provide inspiration for new design ideas, and aid in product redesign. While prior research has investigated how dissecting a product before idea generation impacts the creative output of the ideation session, these studies failed to look at the types of ideas generated before dissection or how the type of product dissected impacts this. Thus, the goal of the current study was to examine how product dissection impacts the solution space explored by students. Fifty-five undergraduate engineering students participated in the experiment; 40 participants virtually dissected a product, while the remaining 15 completed a personality test. The results of the study highlight that students explored new types of ideas during the second ideation session for all conditions and at all levels, with students having the biggest increase in embodiment variety when they dissected analogically far products. Overall, there were no differences in design variety between students in the dissection condition and the incubation condition. This study highlights how incubation can impact design variety and calls for further investigation of the interaction between product dissection and incubation.

A Case Study in Challenging Engineering Requirements

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seth R. Crouch ◽  
Gregory M. Mocko
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Engineering Design ◽  
Conceptual Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Essential Element ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Concept Selection ◽  
A Value ◽  
Value Model

Requirements are an essential element to engineering design as they are used to focus idea generation during conceptual design, provide criteria for decision making during concept selection, and verify the chosen concept fulfills product needs. Because they are essential to the entire design process, emphasis must be placed on ensuring that they are correct. This research focuses on a value-based methodology useful for challenging and validating established requirements. A case study was conducted on an industry-sponsored project to use this value-based process on the requirements that constrain the design of an automotive seat. A human anthropomorphic model, comfort value model, occupant safety model, and a model of an automotive seat are integrated to establish an H-point travel window to maximize the safety and comfort of an automotive seating structure. This case study shows that this approach provides evidence to establish requirements based on value to the human rather than legacy seating requirements.

Confidently Exploring the Solution Space: The Within-Subject Effects of Product Dissection on Design Variety and Creative Self-Efficacy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth M. Starkey ◽  
Mohammad Alsager Alzayed ◽  
Samuel T. Hunter ◽  
Scarlett R. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Self Efficacy ◽  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Solution Space ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Physical Principle ◽  
Educational Tool ◽  
Working Principle ◽  
Creative Self ◽  
Design Ideas

Product dissection is a popular educational tool in engineering design due to its ability to help students understand the components and sub-components of a product, provide inspiration for new design ideas, and aid in product redesign. While prior research has investigated how dissecting a product before idea generation impacts the creative output of the ideation session, these studies failed to look at the types of ideas generated before dissection or how the type of product dissected impacts this. In addition, few studies have looked at how creative self-efficacy (CSE), or one’s belief in their creative ability, is influenced by these intervention activities. Thus, the current study was developed to respond to these research voids through an exploratory study with engineering design students. The results of the study suggest that virtual dissection helps students generate a larger variety of ideas after the activity at the physical principle, working principle, and embodiment levels, and that the complexity of the dissected product impacts variation at the embodiment level. In addition, CSE was not affected by the dissection activity. These results strongly support the utilization and implementation of dissection practices in engineering education as a means for aiding students in the expansion of the solution space in the early stages of design. They also bring attention to the need to explore the exact cause-effect relationship between innovation interventions and student confidence gains in their creative abilities.

Possessing the Iconic Book

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 309-329
Author(s):  
Claudia V. Camp
Keyword(s):  
Second Century ◽  
Religious Literature ◽  
Ben Sira ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Iconic Status ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Woman Wisdom ◽  
Martin Marty

I propose that the notion of possession adds an important ideological nuance to the analyses of iconic books set forth by Martin Marty (1980) and, more recently, by James Watts (2006). Using the early second century BCE book of Sirach as a case study, I tease out some of the symbolic dynamics through which the Bible achieved iconic status in the first place, that is, the conditions in which significance was attached to its material, finite shape. For Ben Sira, this symbolism was deeply tied to his honor-shame ethos in which women posed a threat to the honor of his eternal name, a threat resolved through his possession of Torah figured as the Woman Wisdom. What my analysis suggests is that the conflicted perceptions of gender in Ben Sira’s text is fundamental to his appropriation of, and attempt to produce, authoritative religious literature, and thus essential for understanding his relationship to this emerging canon. Torah, conceived as female, was the core of this canon, but Ben Sira adds his own literary production to this female “body” (or feminized corpus, if you will), becoming the voice of both through the experience of perfect possession.

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