Context
Engineering design skills are essential for engineering students to succeed in their careers. Engineering design is a skill that is in high demand in the current job market and should be prioritized in education.
Purpose
While design has been acknowledged as a cognitive skill in research, there exists limited literature addressing the cognitive foundations of design thinking. Hence, engineering educators must understand the engineering design process, as well as the different ways students approach design problem-solving and the potential reason behind these differences. To understand how people solve design problems, we need to consider how their minds work and the strategies they use. Spatial ability stands out as a cognitive factor that is crucial for designers and holds significance in well-established theories and models of intelligence. However, to date, research exploring the impact of spatial ability on design thinking and its influence on problem-scoping behaviors remains limited. This paper examines how engineering students’ spatial skills influence how they define the scope of open-ended design problems. The central research question that guides this paper is “How do design problem-scoping behaviors differ for engineering students based on their spatial scores?”.
Methods
The researchers used a mixed methods research approach to answer their research question, collecting qualitative and quantitative data in two phases. One hundred twenty-seven undergraduate engineering students completed four tests that measure spatial reasoning skills in the quantitative phase and 101 students returned to finish the three design tasks in the second phase. This paper will examine the performance of students with low spatial and high spatial skills on one of the completed design tasks.
Outcomes
From the study, it was clear that spatial skills have an impact on the design-scoping behaviors of the undergraduate engineering students. It was inferred that high spatial skill visualizers emphasized the technical details of the design problem whereas low spatial skill visualizers emphasized the context of the design problem during their problem-scoping behavior. A Mann-Whitney test revealed there was a statistically significant difference in detail- and context-focused segments between the high and low spatial visualizer groups.
Conclusion
This research study confirms that a relationship exists between spatial and design skills. The study also found that undergraduate engineering students with different levels of spatial skills had different approaches to scoping design problems.
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MODELLING AND PROFILING STUDENT DESIGNERS’ COGNITIVE COMPETENCIES IN COMPUTER-AIDED DESIGN
Abstract There are three approaches to studying designers – through their cognitive profile, design behaviors, and design artifacts (e.g., quality). However, past work has rarely considered all three data domains together. Here we introduce and describe a framework for a comprehensive approach to engineering design, and discuss how the insights may benefit engineering design research and education. To demonstrate the proposed framework, we conducted an empirical study with a solar energy system design problem. Forty-six engineering students engaged in a week-long computer-aided design challenge that assessed their design behavior and artifacts, and completed a set of psychological tests to measure cognitive competencies. Using a machine learning approach consisting of k-means, hierarchical, and spectral clustering, designers were grouped by similarities on the psychological tests. Significant differences were revealed between designer groups in their sequential design behavior, suggesting that a designer's cognitive profile is related to how they engage in the design process.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1842588
- PAR ID:
- 10311692
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the Design Society
- Volume:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2732-527X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Context Engineering design skills are essential for engineering students to succeed in their careers. Engineering design is a skill that is in high demand in the current job market and should be prioritized in education. Purpose While design has been acknowledged as a cognitive skill in research, there exists limited literature addressing the cognitive foundations of design thinking. Hence, engineering educators must understand the engineering design process, as well as the different ways students approach design problem-solving and the potential reason behind these differences. To understand how people solve design problems, we need to consider how their minds work and the strategies they use. Spatial ability stands out as a cognitive factor that is crucial for designers and holds significance in well-established theories and models of intelligence. However, to date, research exploring the impact of spatial ability on design thinking and its influence on problem-scoping behaviors remains limited. This paper examines how engineering students’ spatial skills influence how they define the scope of open-ended design problems. The central research question that guides this paper is “How do design problem-scoping behaviors differ for engineering students based on their spatial scores?”. Methods The researchers used a mixed methods research approach to answer their research question, collecting qualitative and quantitative data in two phases. One hundred twenty-seven undergraduate engineering students completed four tests that measure spatial reasoning skills in the quantitative phase and 101 students returned to finish the three design tasks in the second phase. This paper will examine the performance of students with low spatial and high spatial skills on one of the completed design tasks. Outcomes From the study, it was clear that spatial skills have an impact on the design-scoping behaviors of the undergraduate engineering students. It was inferred that high spatial skill visualizers emphasized the technical details of the design problem whereas low spatial skill visualizers emphasized the context of the design problem during their problem-scoping behavior. A Mann-Whitney test revealed there was a statistically significant difference in detail- and context-focused segments between the high and low spatial visualizer groups. Conclusion This research study confirms that a relationship exists between spatial and design skills. The study also found that undergraduate engineering students with different levels of spatial skills had different approaches to scoping design problems.more » « less
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null (Ed.)Abstract Product/service systems (PSSs) are increasingly found in markets, and more resources are being invested in PSS design. Despite the substantial research into PSS design, the current literature exhibits an incomplete understanding of it as a cognitive activity. This article demonstrates that the methods used to analyze product designers’ cognitive behavior can be used to produce comparable and commensurable results when analyzing PSS designers. It also generates empirical grounding for the development of hypotheses based on a cognitive study of a PSS design session in a laboratory environment using protocol analysis. This study is a part of a larger project comparing PSS design with product design. The results, which are based on the function–behavior–structure coding scheme, show that PSS design, when coded using this scheme, can be quantitatively compared with product design. Five hypotheses were developed based on the results of the study of this design session concerning where and how designers expend their cognitive design effort. These hypotheses can be used to design experiments that test them and provide the grounding for a fuller understanding of PSS design.more » « less
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Gero, J.S. (Ed.)To explore the connection between brain and behavior in engineering design, this study measured the change in neurocognition of engineering students while they developed concept maps. Concept maps help designers organize complex ideas by illustrating components and relationships. Student concept maps were graded using a pre-established scoring method and compared to their neurocognitive activation. Results show significant correlations between performance and neurocognition. Concept map scores were positively correlated with activation in students’ prefrontal cortex. A prominent sub-region was the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), which is generally associated with divergent thinking and cognitive flexibility. Student scores were negatively correlated with measures of brain network density. The findings suggest a possible neurocognitive mechanism for better performance. More research is needed to connect brain activation to the cognitive activities that occur when designing but these results provide new evidence for the brain functions that support the development of complex ideas during design.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1017/pds.2021.477
