Designers implement a variety of models and representations during the design process, yet little is known about the cognitive impacts of various representations.This study focuses on how physical models can assist novices in mitigating design fixation to undesirable features. During idea generation, designers tend to fixate on examples they encounter or their own initial ideas. The first hypothesis states that designers tend to duplicate features of provided examples. The second hypothesis states that this fixation can be mitigated with appropriate warnings. The last hypothesis is that building and testing physical models can help designers in mitigating fixation. To investigate these theories, a quasi-experiment is conducted as Copying these flawed features creates more complicated and less effective designs.However, through the physical testing of their designs, participants identify and fix the design flaws. These results indicate that existing designs and experiences have the potential to limit innovation and that designers need to be trained with effective methods for mitigating design fixation. Building prototypes can help designers in identifying the flawed features and in reducing design fixation; hence the use of physical models in engineering design needs to be encouraged.
The presence of rich pictorial stimuli around designers is a factor that affects the generation of novel ideas. Designers tend to duplicate features from the examples they encounter in their immediate surroundings or in their day-today activities. This adhesion to the existing features from their surroundings is termed as "design fixation". This study explores the fixation effect of examples provided to novices as a part of their class project and ways to mitigate this fixation. We investigate two hypotheses in this study: The first hypothesis is that students tend to duplicate features of examples provided to them, in their designs. The second hypothesis states that ability to build and test their designs helps students to mitigate this fixation. To investigate these, an experiment is conducted as the part of a freshmen class project. Students in three different sections are asked to solve a design problem. One section is provided with a good example, another section with a poor example and third with the poor example with a warning about what makes that design poor. The results show that in majority of cases, students duplicate features from their examples. It is also observed that students who obtain poor example tend to copy the negative feature in their solutions, thereby creating more complicated and less effective designs. They successfully mitigate this fixation as they build and test the physical models of their designs. These results indicate that existing designs and experiences has great potential to limit innovation and engineering students need to be taught effective approaches for mitigating design fixation. Fixation to features limiting functionality of designs can be mitigated by building and testing physical models of those designs. Being able to build prototypes of their ideas can help engineers in identifying the negative features. Students need to be introduced to good and poor examples and they need to be explained what makes those examples good or poor. As engineering educators, we need to train students to learn through building and thus recognize negative features in their designs.
This study investigated the design principles applicable to environmentally friendly product design. An experimental approach was taken to examine principles that aid designers in producing an eco-friendly product that consumers will enjoy and use. Another important aspect to this study was to determine whether a user’s positive environmental attitude or a willingness to change for the environment relates to environmentally responsible behavior. Two hypotheses were developed for successful eco-friendly products and then appropriate products were purchased and modified to test these hypotheses. The activity hypothesis claims that if a product adds user activities, is less likely to be used. The feedback hypothesis states that a product that gives clear feedback is more likely to be used than a product that does not. Student participants took home products to use for one week, recorded each time they used the products, and then completed surveys afterword. For the activity hypothesis, we supposed that the product not adding user activities would be used more than the product adding activities. However, the experimental results have shown that this may not always be the case. For the feedback hypothesis, we speculated that visual reminder feedback and energy savings feedback both increase product usage. An increase in eco-friendly product usage would lead to a lessened negative impact that products are having on our environment. Experimental results indicate that there were errors in the experimental design, but these problems also aid in future work for this research.
Designing engineering systems to minimize their environmental impact is a very complex task. Little exists to guide designers in developing products that are integrated into users' lives thus reducing the overall environmental impact at the system level. A better understanding of user behavior will allow this knowledge to be better integrated into more complex, system level models. As an initial step, this paper seeks an experimental framework to identify important parameters to be measured. For many products, the use stage is where most environmental damage occurs. The factors that may influence or obstruct a person to behave in a proenvironmental way are complicated. It is critical to train our future designers on those factors to reduce environmental impact caused by engineered systems. This paper reports an experiment that tests alternative products to disposable plastic water bottles to answer several eco-friendly design questions. The experiment determines whether certain eco-friendly products are more successful than others are and why this may be the case. This research includes the testing of four different products. Student participants receive one product each to use for a one-week testing period and then return to complete two questionnaires. Surveys measure the success of the product and the level of environmental consciousness through various scales. With the understanding of various factors influencing the market success of environmentally friendly products, a set of guidelines for the design of such products can be developed.
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