Downloads & Free Reading Options - Results

This project is concerned with creativity in engineering design. Both expert designers and inexperienced subjects are being processed; after tests of learning style, both groups perform (1) an individual design task (constructing and electronic analogue simulator for demonstrating aspects of reaction kinetics), and (2) a team task. Section 2 discusses one method for comparing data about design behavior which is obtained during analytic sessions, using a man machine interface, after each design session; this data is an on-line, non-verbally elicited, explanation of how and why a subject produces his design. Most subjects also explain how their design relates to operation in an application domain. Section 3 exemplifies the type of personal and interpersonal design evaluation, using 4 criterion variables, which all subjects are required to furnish at the end of the design task. Descriptions of each design and its standard-format explanation (which includes reference to the application domain, in this case, physical chemistry) are elicited from, and exchanged between, subjects. The technique can be extended to members of an evaluation team presented with alternative designs (satisfying the same brief) and the standard-form explanations which relate them to an application domain. It is believed that the extended technique could provide a potentially useful method for evaluating alternative designs of any kind.