scholarly journals BEHAVIOURAL DIFFERENCES OF HIGH AND LOW PERFORMING TEAMS: A MULTI-INSTITUTIONAL STUDY OF FIRST-YEAR ENGINEERING DESIGN TEAMS

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia K. Sheridan ◽  
Adam Goodman ◽  
Todd Murphy ◽  
Doug Reeve ◽  
Greg Evans
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
First Year ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Team Members ◽  
High Performing

 Abstract – This paper compares student intra-team feedback to identify behaviours that differentiate high and low performing teams. Data from two universities’ first-year engineering design courses was analysed and demonstrated that the ways in which students discussed high and low performing teams was similar. This paper discusses some of the issues with which low performing teams struggled. Both high and low performing teams experienced a lack of quality and quantity of communication, whereas low-performing teams struggled with hoarding work, leveraging team members and supporting others. High-performing teams may have a more collective team mindset that values the skills and perspectives of all team members more.

Helping Teams Expand the Breadth of Their Solution Space Through Product Dissection: A Simulation Based Investigation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Alsager Alzayed ◽  
Christopher McComb ◽  
Samuel T. Hunter ◽  
Scarlett R. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Design Education ◽  
Computational Simulation ◽  
Effective Means ◽  
Solution Space ◽  
First Year ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Engineering Design Education ◽  
Simulation Based ◽  
The Impact

Product dissection has been highlighted as an effective means of interacting with example products in order to produce creative outcomes. While product dissection is often conducted as a team in engineering design education as a component of larger engineering design projects, the research on the effectiveness of product dissection activities has been primarily limited to individuals. Thus, the goal of this study was to investigate the impact of the type(s) of product dissected in a team environment on the breadth of the design space explored and the underlying influence of educational level on these effects. This was accomplished through a computational simulation of 7,000 nominal brainstorming teams generated by a statistical bootstrapping technique that accounted for all possible team configurations. Specifically, each team was composed of four team members based on a design repository of 463 ideas generated by first-year and senior engineering design students after a product dissection activity. The results of the study highlight that simulated senior engineering design teams explored a larger solution space than simulated first-year teams and that dissecting different types of products allowed for the exploration of a larger solution space for all of the teams. The results also showed that dissecting two analogically far and two simple products was most effective in expanding the solution space for simulated senior teams. The findings presented in this study can lead to a better understanding of how to most effectively deploy product dissection modules in engineering design education in order to maximize the solution space explored.

scholarly journals Drawing Inspiration From Human Design Teams for Better Search and Optimization: The Heterogeneous Simulated Annealing Teams Algorithm

2016 ◽  
Vol 138 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher McComb ◽  
Jonathan Cagan ◽  
Kenneth Kotovsky
Keyword(s):  
Simulated Annealing ◽  
Computational Model ◽  
Engineering Design ◽  
Search Strategies ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Design Cognition ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Structure Interaction

Insights uncovered by research in design cognition are often utilized to develop methods used by human designers; in this work, such insights are used to inform and improve computational methodologies. This paper introduces the heterogeneous simulated annealing team (HSAT) algorithm, a multiagent simulated annealing (MSA) algorithm. HSAT is based on a validated computational model of human-based engineering design and retains characteristics of the model that structure interaction between team members and allow for heterogeneous search strategies to be employed within a team. The performance of this new algorithm is compared to several other simulated annealing (SA) based algorithms on three carefully selected benchmarking functions. The HSAT algorithm provides terminal solutions that are better on average than other algorithms explored in this work.

Application of a Protocol to Observe Leadership Behaviors in Engineering Design Teams

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Righter ◽  
Chase Wentzky ◽  
Joshua D. Summers
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Leadership Behaviors ◽  
Informal Leadership ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Function Model ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Undergraduate Engineering ◽  
Protocol Study ◽  
Relational Behaviors ◽  
Functional Leadership

Abstract This protocol study was conducted to increase understanding of the emergence and distribution of functional leadership behaviors in undergraduate engineering design teams. This study applies the protocol presented at the 2018 IDETC to observe design teams consisting of novice engineers constructing a function model during a video recorded session. The videos were then coded for leadership functions and analyzed to determine the distribution of informal leadership functions between the team members and the temporal emergence of the informal leadership structures within the teams. Leadership behaviors were observed to be predominantly transition and action functions with relational behaviors occurring less frequently. The behaviors were quantified by number of occurrences per quintile. The leaders observed to perform the most leadership behaviors early in the sessions often remained consistent. However, leadership functions were shared between team members as demonstrated by the leadership network graphs.

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.

scholarly journals USING AN ONLINE PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT TOOL TO OPTIMIZE FIRST-YEAR ENGINEERING DESIGN TEAMS

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chirag Variawa ◽  
Julie Murphy ◽  
Albert Wong
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Personality Assessment ◽  
Assessment Tool ◽  
Team Formation ◽  
First Year ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Us University ◽  
Formation Phase

This paper discusses a Canadian-made online cloud-based personality assessment tool, and its application in a first-year engineering design course at a large private US university. The motivation for this study is to develop an automated approach to maximizing diversity during team formation at the first-year level, while encouraging learning about differences in personality and their effect on teams. The study found that the CLUES software being used was a step towards greater understanding of differences, and that students who used the knowledge of personality during the team formation phase reported a greater sense of inclusivity.

Design Team Convergence: The Influence of Example Solution Quality

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Fu ◽  
Jonathan Cagan ◽  
Kenneth Kotovsky
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Engineering Design ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Cognitive Engineering ◽  
Design Team ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Solution Quality ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Common Understanding

This study examines how engineering design teams converge to a common understanding of a design problem and its solution, how that is influenced by the information given to them before problem solving and how it is correlated with quality of produced solutions. To understand convergence, a model of the team members’ representations was sought through a cognitive engineering design study, specifically examining the effect of the introduction of a poor example solution and a good example solution prior to problem solving. Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) was used to track the teams’ convergence. Introducing a poor example solution was shown to have a slowing effect on teams’ convergence over time and quality of design, while the good example solution was not significantly different than the control (no example solution) in its effects on convergence, but did cause higher quality solutions. This may have implications for design team performance in practice.

Relationship Conflict and Feeling Communication in Design Teams

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Celeste Roschuni ◽  
Lora Oehlberg ◽  
Sara Beckman ◽  
Alice M. Agogino
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
New Product Development ◽  
Collaborative Design ◽  
New Product ◽  
Relationship Conflict ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Team Members ◽  
High Performing ◽  
High Conflict ◽  
Process Medium

Collaborative design team members use feeling language in their communications with one another, dubbed feeling communications, as they negotiate their interpersonal relationships and task, process and relationship conflict to achieve successful outcomes. In this paper, we examine the use of feeling communications by design teams in a new product development class at UC Berkeley, how their use of feeling communications relates to the levels of conflict experienced by the teams throughout the semester, and how both relate to team performance. From this study, it appears that high-performing and low-conflict teams tend to use high levels of feeling communications. High-conflict teams also use high levels of feeling communications, but often suppress its use when given feedback on their process. Medium-conflict teams appear to initially produce less feeling communication, but build up to a normal level over the course of the project. These results are based on our study of 1,926 messages sent by 13 teams in the Fall 2008 class, and present promising avenues for further exploration.

scholarly journals Drawing Inspiration From Human Design Teams For Better Search And Optimization: The Heterogeneous Simulated Annealing Teams Algorithm

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher McComb ◽  
Jonathan Cagan ◽  
Kenneth Kotovsky
Keyword(s):  
Simulated Annealing ◽  
Computational Model ◽  
Engineering Design ◽  
Simulated Annealing Algorithm ◽  
Search Strategies ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Structure Interaction ◽  
Multi Agent ◽  
Annealing Algorithm

Insights uncovered by research in design cognition are often utilized to develop methods used by human designers; in this work such insights are used to inform and improve computational methodologies. This paper introduces the Heterogeneous Simulated Annealing Team (HSAT) algorithm, a multi-agent simulated annealing algorithm. HSAT is based on a validated computational model of human-based engineering design, and retains characteristics of the model that structure interaction between team members and allow for heterogeneous search strategies to be employed within a team. The performance of this new algorithm is compared to several other simulated annealing based algorithms on three carefully selected benchmarking functions. The HSAT algorithm provides terminal solutions that are better on average than other algorithms explored in this work.

Effective Design Team Composition Using Individual and Group Cognitive Attributes

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaitlyn Fritz ◽  
Line Deschenes ◽  
Vijitashwa Pandey
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Design Solution ◽  
Design Team ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Power Spectral ◽  
Team Interactions ◽  
Significant Area ◽  
Self Assessments

Engineering design is typically a team effort. Design teams frequently need to push technical boundaries to solve the most relevant challenges faced by our society. A significant area of research across multiple fields of investigation, including engineering, is the understanding and use of an individual’s cognitive attributes in the process of assembling productive teams. This research proposes an approach to assembling an engineering design team by first defining the desirable cognitive attributes in the team members. Subsequently, based on individual cognitive profile assessments along these attributes, an exhaustive list of possible design teams is investigated based on their cumulative attribute level. We compare the performance of two teams predicted to perform at different levels, and our results verify the differences between the observations of team interactions and the quality of designs produced. In addition to self-assessments, we also investigate the brain activity of the respondents using electroencephalography (EEG) to evaluate performance in an individual and a team setting. This analysis intends to highlight the characteristics of an individuals’ brain activity under different circumstances to reveal if these characteristics contribute to the success of a design team. EEG data revealed observations such as correlation between raw amplitude and level of team contribution, a higher variation in the channel power spectral density during individual versus team tasks, and a degradation of alpha activity moving from individual to group work. The results of this research can guide organizations to form teams with the necessary cognitive attributes to achieve the optimum design solution.

A Document Analysis Method for Characterizing Design Team Performance

2003 ◽  
Vol 126 (3) ◽  
pp. 378-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andy Dong ◽  
Andrew W. Hill ◽  
Alice M. Agogino
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Design Performance ◽  
Design Concepts ◽  
Semantic Coherence ◽  
Design Documentation ◽  
Design Documents ◽  
The Impact

The premise of this research is that the engineering design process is partially driven by achieving consensus and reconciling points of view among team members. Characterizing the quality of the design performance by measuring the coherence of the description of related design concepts and events in design documentation is examined. Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) was used to analyze design documentation written by self-managing, cross-functional engineering design teams. Computational measurements of document variance and textual coherence were applied to the teams’ design documents, presentation materials and e-mail communication. The levels of semantic coherence were correlated to assessments by faculty and product designers and engineers from industry of the design teams’ process and outcome quality. The results indicated a statistically significant positive correlation between design document coherence and design performance, especially for poorly performing teams. The impact of this research is to provide team managers (people who create teams and manage teams) or self-organizing teams (teams that focus on self-reflection and peer evaluation) computational tools that could be integrated with design information management technologies to assist them in the management of engineering design teams.

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