Comparison of design approaches between engineers and industrial designers
Year: 2013
Editor: John Lawlor, Ger Reilly, Robert Simpson, Michael Ring, Ahmed Kovacevic, Mark McGrath, William Ion, David Tormey, Erik Bohemia, Chris McMahon, Brian Parkinson
Author: Yilmaz, Seda; Daly, Shanna R.; Seifert, Colleen; Gonzalez, Richard
Series: E&PDE
Institution: 1: Iowa State University, United States of America; 2: University of Michigan, United States of America
Section: Experimental Studies in Design Methods
Page(s): 178-183
ISBN: 978-1-904670-42-1
Abstract
Design Heuristics are an idea generation tool based on empirical evidence from successful designs. The heuristics serve as cognitive âshortcutsâ that encourage exploration of novel directions during concept generation. Design Heuristics were identified from an analysis of hundreds of innovative products and from studies of expert engineering and industrial designers. The research reported in this paper examines the utility of Design Heuristics instruction in two different classroom settings with engineering and industrial design students. The aim was to test whether design heuristics can play a useful role in creating new designs and overcoming fixations in the design process. Twenty novice industrial design students and forty-eight novice engineering students were given a short design task along with a set of twelve Design Heuristics. The heuristics were illustrated on cards describing their use and two example images of products using each heuristic. The students participated in a short instructional session on the use of heuristics, and were asked to generate concepts for a given problem. The results showed that the Design Heuristics helped the students to generate more diverse candidate concepts, and that the concepts they produced were creative and complex. Students sometimes applied multiple heuristics within a single design, leading to more complex and well-developed solutions.
Keywords: Design strategies, industrial design, engineering design, creativity