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Generating novel ideas is a challenging part of engineering design, especially when the design task has been undertaken for an extended period of time. How can experienced designers develop new ideas for familiar problems? A tool called Design Heuristicsprovides strategies that support engineers in considering more, and more different, concepts during idea generation. Design Heuristics have been shown to help novice engineers create a set of more diverse and creative candidate concepts. In this case study, we extended this approach to a group of professional engineers who had worked on a specific product line for many years. In a workshop format, a small group of engineers worked with the heuristics in two separate sessions and generated ideas collaboratively. Video recordings were analyzed to reveal how the heuristics were used to stimulate new designs for their product line. We found that Design Heuristics bring order in ideas and elaboration on ideas, perhaps through coordinating effort on idea evaluation, increasing capacity to improve the ideas of others, and facilitating interaction between participants. This case study shows using Design Heuristics can assist even expert engineers to increase the variety of concepts generated, resulting in a larger set of ideas to consider. Keywords engineering design, idea generation, teamwork in design Disciplines Industrial and Product Design Comments This is a manuscript of an article from Can experienced designers learn from new tools? A case study of idea generation within a professional engineering teamGenerating novel ideas is a challenging part of engineering design, especially when the design task has been undertaken for an extended period of time. How can experienced designers develop new ideas for familiar problems? A tool called Design Heuristics provides strategies that support engineers in considering more, and more different, concepts during idea generation. Design Heuristics are strategies for idea generation based on empirical analyses of idea generation from professional and student engineers and industrial designers working on a wide variety of product designs. Design Heuristics have been shown to help novice engineers create a set of more diverse and creative candidate concepts. In this case study, we extended this approach to a group of professional engineers who had worked on a specific product line for many years. In a workshop format, a small group of engineers worked with the heuristics in two separate sessions, and generated ideas collaboratively. Video recordings were analyzed to reveal how the heuristics were used to stimulate new designs for their product line. This case study shows using Design Heuristics can assist even expert engineers to increase the variety of concepts generated, resulting in a larger set of ideas to consider.

in engineering education, earning her doctorate from Purdue University's Engineering Education program in 2008. Her research focuses on the investigation and application of complex professional skills, specifically design ideation, innovation practices, and creative processes within engineering, outside of engineering, and cross-disciplinarily. Her research includes an emphasis on the translation of research to practice in the form of pedagogy, curriculum development, and faculty support and programming in implementing evidence-based best practices in teaching and learning.

We developed a set of teachable design ideation strategies to support diversity in concept generation. These strategies, called "Design Heuristics," are intended to facilitate the discovery of diverse concept ideas in the design of products. Design Heuristics were extracted from the work of students and professionals from engineering and industrial design. When applied to a new design problem, Design Heuristics serve as cognitive "shortcuts" for exploring the space of possible design solutions. In this study, we provided an educational session about Design Heuristics to 48 students in an introductory engineering course, and analyzed the design concepts they generated for a specific design task. The results showed that concepts guided by the Design Heuristics were more original than concepts that did not include their application. In a short intervention, some students were able to make use of the heuristics, and to generate original concepts. The findings demonstrate that Design Heuristics facilitate exploration of the design space beyond the "obvious" solutions.

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