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Overview of Innovation, Design Reasoning, Engineering Education, and

Methods Lab

Julie LinseyInnovation, Design Reasoning, Engineering

Education and Methods LabWoodruff School of Mechanical Engineering

Design Cognition in Engineering

Design cognition Idea generation

Design by analogy Bioinspired design

Human behavior in the design process

Mental Models New tools and design

methods

Cognitive Impacts of Physical Representations

• Findings:– Physical models helps designers to overcome

negative design fixation to ineffective concepts– Physical representations early in the design

process must minimizes costs (time, efforts, money, etc.) otherwise design fixation tends to occur due to the Sunk Cost effect

– Physical representation assist designers in overcoming flaws in their mental models of how a system works and improves the quality of the design

Three different physical models used in the development of the

orange juicer (IDSA, 2003)

Motivation- Designers often use physical models in idea generation and throughout the design process – more needs to be know about the cognitive impact

NSF CMMI-1322335

Current Work Design by Analogy: Meta-Analogy by Performance Specification (MAPS)• Goal: Retrieve appropriate analogues based on

both performance specifications and function.• Current computer tools only use function

Humpback Whale Fin

Shape

Wind Turbine Blade

Vertical Wind

Turbine

Reliability

Drag

Lift

Power Output

EfficiencyDesired

Performance

Illustration of what MAPS output might look like for a set of analogues.

Collaborative Project with Prof. Cameron Turner (Colorado School of Mines) NSF CMMI- 1304383

Proposed overview of MAPS Process. MAPS is in development

Bioinspired Design Methods’ Impact

• Measure how engineering creativity changes from freshman to seniors

• Determining the impact of different Bioinspired Methods– Bio TRIZ– Function-based bioinspired design– Case studies

NSF EEC- 1025155 Co-PIs McAdams & McTigue

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Impact of Maker Spaces!Objectives: • Determine the impact of the maker spaces on students• Identify best practices and novel approaches for maker

spaces.

We believe university maker spaces:• increase student retention• improve students’ engineering

innovation skills• increase design confidence • improve deep technical knowledge

of engineering

Studying Complex Systems Engineering

Mental Model Hypothesis

Fixation Hypothesis

Sunk Cost Hypothesis

Controlled ExperimentQualitative Study- Grad teamQualitative Existing Project

Triangulation of Results

Research Question: How do physical representations impact design cognition during early concept generation?

Viswanathan, V., and Linsey, J., 2014, “Spanning the Complexity Chasm: A Research Method to Move from Simple to Complex Engineering Systems,” Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing (AIEDAM)- Special Issue on Complex Systems, 28(4), accepted.As Green As

It Gets, 2011

Hypothesis

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Other Possible Applications of My Research

• Experts predictions of design consequences

• Eliciting analogies used for making choices

• Evaluation of inferences based on analogical reasoning

Thank-you.Questions?

Julie LinseyAssistant Professor

Georgia Institute of Technologyjulie.linsey@me.gatech.edu

https://sites.google.com/site/idreemlaboratory/http://www.me.gatech.edu/faculty/linsey

Acknowledgements National Science Foundation: CMMI-1000954, DUE-0942400,

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Study Approaches

• Controlled Experiments or Quasi-Experimental Designs

• Mixed Methods• Survey and Interviews• Empirical Product Studies of Existing

Documents (qualitative)

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Types of Research Activities the IDREEM Lab Focuses on

• Developing new methods to support innovation/invention.

• Which approach or method is best?• Quantifying early phase design

outcomes.• Identification of Design Principles

(e.g., DFM, DFX)