Session: DTM-02-01 - Discussions on Design Creativity & Ideation

Paper Number: 91313

91313 - Investigating Priming Effects of Sketch Evaluation Instructions on Idea Generation Productivity 

Engineering design involves intensive visual-spatial reasoning, and engineers depend upon external representation to develop concepts during idea generation. Previous research has not explored how our visual representation skills influence our idea generation effectiveness. If designers’ sketching skills are lacking, this could cause them to spend more effort focused on how to visually represent a concept reducing the effort available to focus on generating concepts. Further, this effect could be compounded if designers believed that their sketching skill would be evaluated or judged by their peers. This evaluation apprehension could cause additional mental workload distracting from the productivity of idea generation.

The goal of this study is to investigate and better understand the relationship between sketching skill and idea generation ability. In this paper, we present preliminary results of the relationship between independent measures of sketching skill and idea generation ability from an entry-level engineering design and graphics course. During data collection, task instructions were given in two ways to independent groups: one group was instructed upfront that sketching would be evaluated, while the second group was kept blind to the sketch evaluation. In this paper, we also examine the potential priming effects of sketch quality evaluation apprehension on idea generation productivity. The results show that sketching quality and idea quantity are largely independent, and that the priming effects of sketch evaluation instructions are small to negligible on idea generation productivity.

Presenting Author: Morgan Weaver Georgia Institute of Technology

Presenting Author Biography: Morgan Weaver is a PhD Candidate at Georgia Institute of Technology. His research focuses are design theory and methods and engineering education. Morgan is passionate about teaching and innovative problem solving. He plans to go into consulting after completing his PhD and afterwards come back to academia for teaching.

Authors:

Morgan Weaver Georgia Institute of Technology
Jacob Buck Georgia Institute of Technology
Hillary Merzdorf Purdue University
Denis Dorozhkin Georgia Institute of Technology
Kerrie Douglas Purdue University
Julie Linsey Georgia Institute of Technology