Art Meets Engineering Design: An Approach for Reducing Sketch Inhibition in Engineers During the Design Process

Abstract

While much prior work has been done regarding sketching and its impact on design and a few on how to train engineers to sketch, there have been no prior studies in engineering to reduce inhibition to frequent sketching. This paper describes a sketching intervention developed from art teaching aimed at reducing inhibition to sketching and a study to evaluate its effectiveness. In the study, students (n = 55) were tested with pre-mid-post assessments consisting of a mechanical, organic, and design-oriented sketching task and a TLX survey measuring the level of difficulty. The study found that the students overwhelmingly reported their inhibition was lowered, but the short-term TLX data suggested inhibition was higher. However, the TLX data showed a longterm decrease in inhibition-related measures, perhaps suggesting that long-term encouragement to sketch is effective in reducing inhibition to sketch. These results tentatively suggest that sketch inhibition is reduced by actively promoting creativity and sketching, some use of the activities presented here, and by deemphasizing the importance of higher-level skills such as perspective drawing.

Comparing Functional Analysis Methods for Product Dissection Tasks

“…This method is considered opposite to the top-down method, but considered to be identical [16,33], and asks engineers to consider the individual functions of parts. We did not compare this method in this study, but another of our studies found that the cognition between the bottom-up and other methods appears to be different [34]. The results of this study are also compared in that paper.…”

Sketching Engineering Design in STEM Classroom: A Systematic Review

“…Three search results by (English, 2018) is actually part of longitudinal research in inculcating engineering design process thinking among elementary schoolchildren. This due to (Booth, Bhasin, & Ramani, 2014) that sketching are skills that require time to develop. All five studies agreed that teacher's instruction play major role in supporting younger children ability to produce design in engineering-based project.…”

Reducing Sketch Inhibition During Concept Generation: Psychophysiological Evidence of the Effect of Interventions

“…In order to make sure the relative time spent doing warm-ups was about the same, the lines and circles group was asked to continue this activity for 8 minutes. The third group was guided through a reduced selection of activities proposed by Booth et al [11] (see Table 1). These activities are based on warm-ups found in sketching books and in art classes at Purdue.…”

“…Many of these studies have found that students new to sketching are often reluctant to sketch. There are several causes of this inhibition, and Booth et al have done some initial work to identify interventions to overcome this inhibition [11]. Their work is based on art techniques that help prepare artists for a creative session.…”