scholarly journals “Collaborating To Success”: An Experimental Study of Group Idea Generation Techniques

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. S. Linsey ◽  
M. G. Green ◽  
J. T. Murphy ◽  
K. L. Wood ◽  
A. B. Markman
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Factorial Experiment ◽  
Concept Generation

Numerous concept generation methods have been developed that can assist an engineer in the initial phases of design. Unfortunately, limited empirical data is available to guide users in selecting preferred techniques. This study systematically investigates underlying factors of four well-used and documented techniques: Brainsketching, Gallery, 6-3-5, and C-Sketch. These techniques are resolved into their key parameters and a factorial experiment is performed to understand how the key parameters affect the outcomes of the techniques. The factors chosen for this study include: how ideas are displayed to participants (all are viewed at once or exchanged between participants, “rotational viewing”) and the mode used to communicate ideas (written words only, sketches only, or a combination of written words and sketches). This study also provides a method for measuring the quantity of ideas generated when the ideas are represented in the form of both sketches and words. A number of interesting findings are produced from the study. First, the study shows that individuals gain a significant number of ideas from their teammates. Ideas when shared, can foster new idea tracks, more complete layouts, and diverse synthesis. Second, the systematic exchange of a set of ideas between participants produces a greater quantity of ideas than having all ideas displayed in a gallery form. This result shows that techniques like 6-3-5 or C-Sketch, where each person views only a subset of all the team’s ideas at any given time, are more likely to produce a larger quantity of ideas than techniques where individuals can continuously view all the ideas the team has generated. Finally, as teams developed ideas, the quality improved. This result is a consequence of the teamsharing environment and, in conjunction with quantity of concepts, validates the effectiveness of group idea generation.

An Experimental Study of Group Idea Generation Techniques: Understanding the Roles of Idea Representation and Viewing Methods

2011 ◽  
Vol 133 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
J. S. Linsey ◽  
E. F. Clauss ◽  
T. Kurtoglu ◽  
J. T. Murphy ◽  
K. L. Wood ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Factorial Experiment ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Innovation Processes

Advances in innovation processes are critically important as economic and business landscapes evolve. There are many concept generation techniques that can assist a designer in the initial phases of design. Unfortunately, few studies have examined these techniques that can provide evidence to suggest which techniques should be preferred or how to implement them in an optimal way. This study systematically investigates the underlying factors of four common and well-documented techniques: brainsketching, gallery, 6-3-5, and C-sketch. These techniques are resolved into their key parameters, and a rigorous factorial experiment is performed to understand how the key parameters affect the outcomes of the techniques. The factors chosen for this study with undergraduate mechanical engineers include how concepts are displayed to participants (all are viewed at once or subsets are exchanged between participants, i.e., “rotational viewing”) and the mode used to communicate ideas (written words only, sketches only, or a combination of written words and sketches). Four metrics are used to evaluate the data: quantity, quality, novelty, and variety. The data suggest that rotational viewing of sets of concepts described using sketches combined with words produces more ideas than having all concepts displayed in a “gallery view” form, but a gallery view results in more high quality concepts. These results suggest that a hybrid of methods should be used to maximize the quality and number of ideas. The study also shows that individuals gain a significant number of ideas from their teammates. Ideas, when shared, can foster new idea tracks, more complete layouts, and a diverse synthesis. Finally, as teams develop more concepts, the quality of the concepts improves. This result is a consequence of the team-sharing environment and, in conjunction with the quantity of ideas, validates the effectiveness of group idea generation. This finding suggests a way to go beyond the observation that some forms of brainstorming can actually hurt productivity.

scholarly journals Obedience Pressure and Tax Sanction: An Experimental Study on Tax Compliance

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 68-81
Author(s):  
Kadek Pranetha Prananjaya ◽  
Niluh Putu Dian Rosalina Handayani Narsa
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Practical Implication ◽  
Compliance Rate ◽  
Tax Compliance ◽  
Factorial Experiment ◽  
Experiment Method ◽  
Interaction Test

This research aims to test the influence of tax sanction and obedience pressure on tax compliance. By applying a 2x2 between-subject factorial experiment method, this research has found the empirical evidence that taxpayers tend to be more tax-compliant when the tax sanction is high rather than low. Next, when taxpayers tend to be more non-compliant when they receive obedience pressure from their superior rather than not. Lastly, from the interaction test between tax sanction and obedience pressure variables, the researcher found empirical evidence that shows that, when given high tax sanctions, a taxpayer will have higher tax compliance rate when they do not receive obedience pressure compared with when they receive obedience pressure. This research has a practical implication that obedience pressure from a superior is a key that could potentially reduce tax compliance rate because, although there are low or high sanctions, if there are any obedience pressure, then the tax compliance rate will be low.

A Validation Regarding Effectiveness of Scenario Graph

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiroyuki Yagita ◽  
Akira Tose ◽  
Madoka Nakajima ◽  
Sun K. Kim ◽  
Takashi Maeno
Keyword(s):  
Contextual Information ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Test Group ◽  
Problem Formulation ◽  
Service Development ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Significant Difference

Scenario Graph is a structured mind mapping methodology that aids design teams to generate potential scenarios for new products and services while visually organizing contextual information. Since its introduction in industry and academia, the Scenario Graph has helped design teams to capture new values and behaviors of potential customers during the problem formulation stage. At the same time, the Scenario Graph, sharing a common challenge with various design methods, has faced difficulty regarding validation of its effectiveness as a design method. This paper describes a validation framework for a method in problem formulation stages and an experiment, which compare ideation results of 87 people — 43 people with the Scenario Graph method (as a test group) and 44 people with the Brainstorming (as a control group) — to solve an identical problem. While the results show no statistically significant difference in the number of ideas generated, the data reveals statistically significant differences in the quality of ideas. The test group, which used the Scenario Graph, yielded ideas that were more novel, feasible, and abstract than the control group, which used the Brainstorming, did. These metrics represent a way to measure the quality of ideas in the domain of engineering design. Our experiment confirms the hypotheses that the Scenario Graph is effective in improving the performance of idea generation sessions, which is consistent with qualitative evaluations. The lessons, gained from this experiment, provide an insight on how this method can be effectively used during the early stages of concept generation of a company’s process for product and/or service development.

scholarly journals Modelling the Dynamics of Influence on Individual Thinking during Idea Generation in Co-design Teams

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harshika Singh
Keyword(s):  
Social Influence ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Current Work ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Idea Quality

Social influence is not evenly distributed in teams. Some individuals, referredto here as influencers, become more influential than others. Consequentially,these influencers play a significant role in shaping project performance.The current work simulates the presence of influencers duringidea generation in co-design teams to better understand emergent socio-cognitivephenomena. Besides providing, a novel approach for modelling learningin concept generation the model highlights the results related to individualcognition during idea generation. Idea quality and exploration of designspace are affected by the presence of influencers in design teams. Teamswith no well-defined influencers produce solutions with high general explorationbut less quality. In contrast, the agents in the teams with only oneinfluencer produce solutions high quality than those teams with no influencers.

Can Design Teams Be Empathically Creative? A Simulation-Based Investigation on the Role of Team Empathy on Concept Generation and Selection

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Alsager Alzayed ◽  
Scarlett R. Miller ◽  
Jessica Menold ◽  
Jacquelyn Huff ◽  
Christopher McComb
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Computational Simulation ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
First Year ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Design Activities ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Research on empathy has been surging in popularity in the engineering design community since empathy is known to help designers develop a deeper understanding of the users’ needs. Because of this, the design community has been invested in devising and assessing empathic design activities. However, research on empathy has been primarily limited to individuals, meaning we do not know how it impacts team performance, particularly in the concept generation and selection stages of the design process. Specifically, it is unknown how the empathic composition of teams, average (elevation) and standard deviation (diversity) of team members’ empathy, would impact design outcomes in the concept generation and selection stages of the design process. Therefore, the goal of the current study was to investigate the impact of team trait empathy on concept generation and selection in an engineering design student project. This was accomplished through a computational simulation of 13,482 teams of noninteracting brainstorming individuals generated by a statistical bootstrapping technique drawing upon a design repository of 806 ideas generated by first-year engineering students. The main findings from the study indicate that the elevation in team empathy positively impacted simulated teams’ unique idea generation and selection while the diversity in team empathy positively impacted teams’ generation of useful ideas. The results from this study can be used to guide team formation in engineering design.

Influence of Different Representation of Requirements on Idea Generation: An Experimental Study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akash Patel ◽  
Joshua D. Summers ◽  
Sourabh Karmakar
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Mechanical Engineering ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Problem Statement ◽  
Engineering Project ◽  
Design Problems ◽  
Is Research ◽  
Requirements Document ◽  
The Impact

Abstract The objective of this research is to understand how different representations of requirements influence idea generation in terms of quantity, addressment, sketch detail, novelty, and variety of conceptual sketches. Requirements are statements of need, desires, and wishes of the stakeholders that are used by engineers to frame the problem. Essentially, requirements are the raison d’etre for any engineering project. As the requirements document provides constraints and criteria for a design, it defines and determines the success of a project. While there is research studying the effect of requirements on the conceptual sketch, little study has focused one the impact of different requirement representations on solution development. An experimental study was conducted with 52 fourth year mechanical engineering undergraduate students. Two design problems were formulated with three different representations: a problem statement with embedded requirements, a problem statement and a traditional requirement list, and a problem statement with contextualized scrum stories. Each student was provided each design problems with two different representations of requirements. It was found that the use of contextualized scrum story representations significantly affected the conceptual sketch in the novelty of solution fragments and addressment of requirements, while no significant change in variety, sketch detail, and quantity was seen. Also, the contextualized representation positively affected all metrics but the sketch quantity. Finally, it was found that quantity is not directly related to the number of requirements addressed in the sketches.

Comparing Ideation Techniques for Beginning Designers

2016 ◽  
Vol 138 (10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shanna R. Daly ◽  
Colleen M. Seifert ◽  
Seda Yilmaz ◽  
Richard Gonzalez
Keyword(s):  
Design Problem ◽  
Morphological Analysis ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
First Year ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Design Heuristics ◽  
Engineering Design Problem ◽  
Consensual Assessment Technique ◽  
Initial Idea

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.

Inspired Internal Search: Using Neuroimaging to Understand Design Ideation and Concept Generation With Inspirational Stimuli

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kosa Goucher-Lambert ◽  
Jarrod Moss ◽  
Jonathan Cagan
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Analogical Reasoning ◽  
Design Research ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Brain Activation ◽  
Specific Pattern ◽  
Design Activity ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Levels Of Abstraction ◽  
Insight Into

While a large subset of work within the design research community has demonstrated that supportive stimuli (e.g., analogies) are a powerful assistive tool for designers, little is known about the cognitive processes enabling inspiration during design activity. To provide insight into this open question, a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment was developed to study design concept generation with and without support from inspirational stimuli (N = 21). The stimuli provided in this work were words given at varying levels of abstraction from the design problems and were meant to support cognitive processes similar to analogical reasoning. Results from this work demonstrate that inspirational stimuli of any kind (near or far from the problem space) improve the fluency of idea generation and illustrate the moments during ideation that such stimuli can be used as a supportive tool. Furthermore, neuroimaging data help to uncover distinct brain activation networks based upon reasoning with and without inspirational stimuli. We find that the successful application of inspirational stimuli during concept generation leads to a specific pattern of brain activation, which we term “inspired internal search.” Prior work by the authors has demonstrated an impasse-based activation network that is more prevalent in the absence of inspirational stimuli. Together, these brain activation networks provide insight into the differences between ideating with and without inspirational stimuli. Moreover these networks lend new meaning to what happens when a presented stimuli is too far from the design problem being solved.

An Engineering-to-Biology Thesaurus for Engineering Design

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacquelyn K. S. Nagel ◽  
Robert B. Stone ◽  
Daniel A. McAdams
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Idea Generation ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Biological Information ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Functional Modeling ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
Engineering Designs ◽  
Design Activities

Engineering design is considered a creative field that involves many activities with the end goal of a new product that fulfills a purpose. Utilization of systematic methods or tools that aid in the design process is recognized as standard practice in industry and academia. The tools are used for a number of design activities (i.e., idea generation, concept generation, inspiration searches, functional modeling) and can span across engineering disciplines, the sciences (i.e., biology, chemistry) or a non-engineering domain (i.e., medicine), with an overall focus of encouraging creative engineering designs. Engineers, however, have struggled with utilizing the vast amount of biological information available from the natural world around them. Often it is because there is a knowledge gap or terminology is difficult, and the time needed to learn and understand the biology is not feasible. This paper presents an engineering-to-biology thesaurus, which we propose affords engineers, with limited biological background, a tool for leveraging nature’s ingenuity during many steps of the design process. Additionally, the tool could also increase the probability of designing biologically-inspired engineering solutions. Biological terms in the thesaurus are correlated to the engineering domain through pairing with a synonymous function or flow term of the Functional Basis lexicon, which supports functional modeling and abstract representation of any functioning system. The second version of the thesaurus presented in this paper represents an integration of three independent research efforts, which include research from Oregon State University, the University of Toronto, and the Indian Institute of Science, and their industrial partners. The overall approach for term integration and the final results are presented. Applications to the areas of design inspiration, comprehension of biological information, functional modeling, creative design and concept generation are discussed. An example of comprehension and functional modeling are presented.

scholarly journals Protobooth: gathering and analyzing data on prototyping in early-stage engineering design projects by digitally capturing physical prototypes

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Jorgen F. Erichsen ◽  
Heikki Sjöman ◽  
Martin Steinert ◽  
Torgeir Welo
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Engineering Design ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Design Research ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Research Tool ◽  
Concept Generation ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Design Projects ◽  
New Research

Abstract Aiming to help researchers capture output from the early stages of engineering design projects, this article presents a new research tool for digitally capturing physical prototypes. The motivation for this work is to collect observations that can aid in understanding prototyping in the early stages of engineering design projects, and this article investigates if and how digital capture of physical prototypes can be used for this purpose. Early-stage prototypes are usually rough and of low fidelity and are thus often discarded or substantially modified through the projects. Hence, retrospective access to prototypes is a challenge when trying to gather accurate empirical data. To capture the prototypes developed through the early stages of a project, a new research tool has been developed for capturing prototypes through multi-view images, along with metadata describing by whom, why, when, and where the prototypes were captured. Over the course of 17 months, this research tool has been used to capture more than 800 physical prototypes from 76 individual users across many projects. In this article, one project is shown in detail to demonstrate how this capturing system can gather empirical data for enriching engineering design project cases that focus on prototyping for concept generation. The authors also analyze the metadata provided by the system to give understanding into prototyping patterns in the projects. Lastly, through enabling digital capture of large quantities of data, the research tool presents the foundations for training artificial intelligence-based predictors and classifiers that can be used for analysis in engineering design research.

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