How Concept Selection Tools Impact the Development of Creative Ideas in Engineering Design Education

Abstract

Concept selection tools have been heavily integrated into engineering design education in an effort to reduce the risks and uncertainties of early-phase design ideas and aid students in the decision-making process. However, little research has examined the utility of these tools in promoting creative ideas or their impact on student team decision making throughout the conceptual design process. To fill this research gap, the current study was designed to compare the impact of two concept selection tools, the concept selection matrix (CSM) and the tool for assessing semantic creativity (TASC) on the average quality (AQL) and average novelty (ANV) of ideas selected by student teams at several decision points throughout an 8-week project. The results of the study showed that the AQL increased significantly in the detailed design stage, while the ANV did not change. However, this change in idea quality was not significantly impacted by the concept selection tool used, suggesting other factors may impact student decision making and the development of creative ideas. Finally, student teams were found to select ideas ranked highly in concept selection tools only when these ideas met their expectations, indicating that cognitive biases may be significantly impeding decision making.

Multicriteria methodology and hierarchical innovation in the energy sector

“…The AHP methodology is one of the most used algorithms (Zheng et al, 2018), being applied to different solutions: planning, selection of alternatives, identification of resources, resolution of conflicts, optimization and others (Thomas et al, 2013;Yazdi and Zarei, 2018; 1290 MD 57,5 Randelovic et al, 2018). Among the advantages that this methodology provides are simplicity, the ease of use and great flexibility (Vaidya and Kumar, 2006;Patari et al, 2018).…”

Empathic creativity: can trait empathy predict creative concept generation and selection?

“…Propensity for Selecting Creative Ideas : To assess simulated teams’ propensity for selecting creative concepts, we used the propensity to ward creative concept selection metric, P C (Toh and Miller, 2015), a metric that has been used in engineering design research (Toh and Miller, 2015, 2016 b ; Zheng et al , 2018). Specifically, P C measures the “…tendency towards selecting (or filtering) creative concepts during the concept selection process” (Toh and Miller, 2015, p. 118).…”

“…Studying designers’ creativity during concept generation solely is not representative of the designers’ creativity since generating creative ideas does not necessarily guarantee the final design's creativity (Rietzschel et al , 2010). One way of assessing designers’ creativity in the concept selection stage is through their propensity for selecting creative ideas (Toh and Miller, 2015, 2016b; Zheng et al , 2018). While concept selection has been found to be an important component of creativity of the design process (Rietzschel et al , 2006) that requires a different cognitive skillset that concept generation (Toh and Miller, 2019), the relationship between empathic tendencies and creative concept selection has not been established in the literature.…”

Refined metric for a-posteriori novelty assessments

“…For instance, novelty can be a key parameter for studies focused on concept selection (e.g. Toh and Miller 2015;Zheng, Ritter, and Miller 2018), as well as in studies focused on design education and/or cognition (Gero, Yu, and Wells 2019;Starkey, Toh, and Miller 2016). Anyhow, it is of fundamental importance to highlight that the proposal presented in this work is strictly limited to SNM and then to the related concept of novelty.…”