Shanna Daly

• University of Michigan

Engineering designers are tasked with increasingly complex problems necessitating the use and development of various supports for navigating complexity. Prescriptive design process models are one such tool. However, little research has explored how engineering designers perceive these models' recommendations for engagement in design work. In this i...

Using prototypes to engage stakeholders during front-end design activities is crucial for successful design outcomes that are grounded in real stakeholder needs and priorities. Compared to prototyping that is used for iterative refinement during back-end engineering design activities, prototyping that informs problem definition, requirements and sp...

Successful medical device design entails an understanding of stakeholder-driven requirements early in the process to assure device safety and usability and support successful and positive patient experiences. Prototypes can be used during stakeholder engagement in the design front end to gather information to inform design decisions. However, an un...

Designers often gather information, for instance through stakeholder or domain expert meetings, to understand their design problems and develop effective solutions. However, few previous studies have provided in-depth descriptions of novice engineering designers' approaches to conducting information gathering meetings. In this preliminary study, we...

Many tools, techniques, and other interventions have been developed to support idea generation within the design process. In previous research, we explored the separate effects of three such design interventions: teaming, problem framing, and design heuristics. In the teaming intervention, participants discussed a design prompt together but recorde...

Various interventions (i.e., methods and tools that guide design work) have been developed to support successful idea generation in a design process. Our previous research explored the impacts of three such design interventions: cognitive-style based teaming, problem framing, and design heuristics. In this work, we looked across these interventions...

Engineers are challenged with addressing open-ended design problems; successful innovation often hinges on the generation of creative concepts during early stage ideation and the ability to iterate on those concepts to develop final designs. To explore students’ approaches to concept generation and development, we conducted a multiple phase think-a...

This paper introduces the Idea Mapping Board, a visualization tool that supports the formation of shared mental models within design teams during concept generation and assessment. The Idea Mapping Board is intended for small teams of two to four practicing engineers or engineering students. It incorporates multiple dimensions for concept assessmen...

This paper focuses on comparing and contrasting methods for assessing the variety of a group of design ideas. Variety is an important attribute of design ideas, because it indicates the extent to which the solution space has been explored. There is a greater likelihood of successfully solving a design problem when a more diverse set of ideas is gen...

Assessment of elaboration in concept generation is critical, as it functions as a communication tool for the designer to iterate on solutions and to convey the generated ideas to other stakeholders involved in the early stages of the design process. Further, design educators may offer feedback to students about the elaborateness of their sketches,...

Design problems evolve throughout many typical design processes. Little research has focused on the extent to which design problems evolve and the role that various factors play in this evolution. In this research, we drew from data gathered for the Design Thinking Research Symposium that traced a design team's process as they progressed from the e...

Learning about the “creative process” helps students as they undertake creative activities within a discipline. Instruction about how to create may involve a variety of pedagogical approaches across disciplines. Our study documents how college students learn about creativ¬e process through a study of their reported course experiences. We surveyed o...

While there is great interest in higher education about teaching creative process, there have been relatively few studies of how courses can facilitate the development of creative skills. The goal of this study was to document how college instructors structure courses intended to develop students’ creative processes. The study data included intervi...

Concept generation techniques can help to support designers in generating multiple ideas during design tasks. However, differences in the ways these techniques guide idea generation are not well understood. This study investigated the qualities of concepts generated by beginning engineering designers using one of three different idea generation tec...

The goal of this study was to explore multiple quantitative measures of design ideation shifts. We specifically investigated shifts in ideation focused on generating incremental design solutions versus radical design solutions. Utilizing Kirton’s Adaption-Innovation (A-I) theory, incremental solutions were labeled as being more adaptive and radical...

The goal of this study was to explore multiple quantitative measures of design ideation shifts. We specifically investigated shifts in ideation focused on generating incremental design solutions versus radical design solutions. Utilizing Kirton’s Adaption-Innovation (A-I) theory, incremental solutions were labeled as being more adaptive and radical...

How do product designers create multiple concepts to consider? To address this question, we combine evidence from four empirical studies of design process and outcomes, including award-winning products, multiple concepts for a project by an experienced industrial designer, and concept sets from 48 industrial and engineering designers for a single d...

When engaged in design activity, what does a designer think about? And how does she draw on disciplinary knowledge, precedent, and other strategies in her design process in order to imagine new possible futures? In this paper, we explore Design Heuristics as a form of intermediate-level knowledge that may explain how designers build on existing kno...

Keelin Leahy is a lecturer of Technology Education at the University of Limerick. Keelin received her PhD from the University of Limerick in 2009, which focused on Design approaches in second level education. Keelin's main research interests include approaches for the development of creativity and design based activities and pedagogy in second leve...

focuses on strategies for design innovations through divergent and convergent thinking as well as through deep needs and community assessments using design ethnography, and translating those strategies to design tools and education. She teaches design and en-trepreneurship courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels, focusing on front-end desi...

Design feedback is an essential pedagogical tool to promote student design progress, yet little research has focused on what instructor feedback looks like, especially across design disciplines. In this paper, we analyzed feedback provided in dance choreography, industrial design, and mechanical engineering to explore variation in feedback type acr...

Current design theory lacks a systematic method to identify what designers know that helps them to create innovative products. In the early stages of idea generation, designers may find novel ideas come readily to mind, or may become fixated on their own or existing products. This may limit the ability to consider more and more varied candidate con...

Research supports the central role cognitive strategies can play in successful concept generation by individual designers. Design heuristics have been shown to facilitate the creation of new design concepts in the early, conceptual stage of the design process, as well as throughout the development of ideas. However, we know relatively little about...

When facing a design problem, designers across disciplines often fall into familiar patterns, and have difficulty producing creative designs. This chapter presents a new tool to help with idea generation called Design Heuristics. These heuristics capture the cognitive "shortcuts" that designers know to help them produce many candidate designs with...

This paper presents an analysis of engineering students’ use of Design Heuristics as part of a team project in an undergraduate engineering design course. Design Heuristics are an empirically derived set of cognitive “rules of thumb” for use in concept generation. We investigated heuristic use in the initial concept generation phase, whether heuris...

We report four cases from a larger study, focusing on participants' self-identified " most creative " concept in relation to their other concepts. As part of an ideation session, first-year engineering students were asked to create concepts for one of two engineering design problems in an 85-minute period, and were exposed to one of two different f...

This paper examines ideation variety as a measure of the extent to which a design solution space has been explored. We investigated one cognitive factor (cognitive style) and one cognitive intervention (Design Heuristics cards) and their relationships with students' ideation variety, both actual and perceived. Cognitive style was measured using the...

Elicitation and development of product requirements are crucial aspects of front-end design and have significant impacts on future product success. This study sought to better understand how novice designers approach the development of product requirements during a front-end design task. Results showed that the stakeholder validity of participants'...

This study explored how guided ideation can support concept initiation and development. We conducted a set of in-class activities in a junior-level industrial design studio at a large Midwestern US university with 20 students. Participants generated concepts individually while working on a previously defined problem. They performed a functional dec...

*Awarded Best Paper in the Design Engineering Education Division, 2015* Ideation is a key component of the design process, which often takes place in team settings. The team approach to design requires the involvement of all parties demonstrating the use of their expertise and knowledge in the area. Teaming has been shown to have both positive and...

Creative thinking during concept generation has been identified as a key source of successful innovations; thus, techniques to support creative conceptual design are imperative in engineering education. However, teaching students to “think innovatively” has been difficult because educators lack effective instructional methods. While there are a var...

The role of ideation in design is to generate design solutions that have the potential for further development. Having many diverse ideas increases the potential for successful design outcomes by increasing the number of possibilities available during concept evaluation and selection phases. How do we define the problems that would allow for the mo...

Idea generation has frequently been explored in design education as an exercise of students' " innate " creativity, and few tools or techniques are offered to scaffold ideation ability. As students develop their design skills, we expect them to demonstrate increasing ideation flexibility—a cognitive and social ability to see a problem from multiple...

Engineering and design students are often required to evaluate their products against user requirements, but frequently, these requirements are abstracted from the user or context of use rather than coming from actual user and context data. Abstraction of user requirements makes it difficult for students to empathize with the eventual user of the p...

The way design problems are presented may influence an engineer's ideation process, and eventually, the design outcomes. We aimed to explore the ways in which pre-engineering students shift their design ideas based on different framings of design problems. We evaluated ideas with respect to the metric of paradigm-relatedness, which refers to the ex...

Design teaching in many disciplines relies on feedback as a primary way for students and instructors to communicate. Our work focused on identifying feedback types in three different design disciplines (dance choreography, industrial design, and mechanical engineering) and analyzing how those feedback types encouraged students to take convergent or...

Background The ability to engage in a creative process to solve a problem or to design a novel artifact is essential to engineering as a profession. Research indicates a need for curricula that enhance students' creative skills in engineering.PurposeOur purpose was to document current practices in engineering pedagogy with regard to opportunities f...

This work reports on a case study in which we followed the design processes of eight student design teams enrolled in a semester-long upper-level design course involving a new ideation tool, “Design Heuristics.” We observed how students formulated concepts and implemented ideas using the Design Heuristics tool in their ongoing projects. Our analysi...

Mathematics (STEM) fields. The central aspect of his work has been trying to understand the bidirectional impacts that occur when students attempt to coordinate ideas and practices from the more basic disciplines of Science and Mathematics with related ideas and practices from the more applied disciplines of Technology and Engineering. This focus i...

A recent National Academy of Engineering report stated, “To capitalize on opportunities created by scientific discoveries, the nation must have engineers who can invent new products and services, create new industries and jobs, and generate new wealth”1. With increased international competition, economic uncertainty, and environmental resource limi...

Ideation is a critical skill for all engineers as they explore problem spaces and develop both short-term and long-term solutions. Engineers can benefit from developing proficiency in a diversity of ideation approaches in order to successfully perform in a variety of problem situations. However, the current engineering education paradigm lacks oppo...

The PEER Collaborative National Network is a national peer mentoring network for early career tenure- Track or mid-career tenured faculty who conduct and are primarily evaluated based on their research related to engineering education. This paper discusses the development, logistics, and outcomes of two PEER workshops built around a community of pr...

Background Ample research provides evidence about the influence of effective teaching practices on student success. Yet the adoption of such practices has been slow at many institutions. Efforts to bridge the gap between research and practice are needed.PurposeWe describe an institutional change plan we developed to bridge this research-to- practic...

Expert engineers are fluent at proposing many conceptual ideas early on in their process for solving a design problem. Beginning engineers are more likely to fixate on one or only a few ideas. Interventions aimed at this stage of the design process could help make it easier for beginning engineers to generate ideas that go beyond their initial ones...

In today's global markets engineers need to design products for a wide variety of stakeholders and cultures. Engineering students, therefore, must learn how to design products that meet the needs of the stakeholders and are appropriate for the cultures in which they will be used. Human-centered design guides students in developing design ideas that...

This study investigates interdisciplinary interactions that take place during the research, development, and early conceptual design phases in the engineering of large-scale complex engineered systems (LaCES) such as aerospace vehicles. These interactions that occur throughout a large engineering development organization, become the initial conditi...

Generating novel ideas is a challenging part of engineering design, especially when the design task has been undertaken for an extended period of time. How can experienced designers develop new ideas for familiar problems? A tool called Design Heuristics provides strategies that support engineers in considering more, and more different, concepts du...

Background Limited research exists on the experiences of engineering returners – those with undergraduate degrees who work for at least five years and return to academia for graduate degrees. Returners bring a different perspective to their graduate studies and postgraduate work than direct-pathway students but face additional challenges. PurposeOu...

Design Heuristics are an idea generation tool based on empirical evidence from successful designs. The heuristics serve as cognitive “shortcuts” 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 in...

This paper presents the outcomes of a study of first-year engineering student perceptions of creative opportunities in engineering design tasks. The study was guided by three key questions: (1) How do first-year engineering students view creativity and its role in engineering? (2) What opportunities do students see for creativity in their engineeri...

In order to support successful strategies in design education and practice, we must have a deep understanding of the complex dynamics of design processes, teams, contexts, and systems. Facilitating this understanding of engineering design requires research methodologies that can capture the nature of the design process from a diversity of aspects s...

Though a majority of engineering PhD students begin their doctoral career shortly after completing an undergraduate degree, what we call direct-pathway students, a significant minority of students are "returners," students who pursue a PhD after working outside of academia for five or more years. In the first phase of a three year NSF-funded study...

Background: Innovation in design depends on successful concept generation. The ideation stage of design is intended to produce multiple, varied concepts from which to develop and choose. Often, instruction on idea generation methods is not offered in engineering classes; however, when taught, it is commonly through techniques like brainstorming, wh...