Exploring the Effects of Problem Framing on Solution Shifts: A Case Study

Abstract

Samuelina Wright is a senior in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan. She has worked in design and ideation research for over a year. Her focus has been on quantifying the diversity of solution sets, studying design problem framing, and exploring paradigm relatedness. She is interested in engineering education, which is where her passion for teaching and her technical background in engineering overlap. As an engineering designer herself, she is interested in understanding individuals' ideation processes and how those processes can be improved and expanded. , Electrical Engineering), Dr. Jablokow's teaching and research interests include problem solving, invention, and creativity in science and engineering, as well as robotics and computational dynamics. In addition to her membership in ASEE, she is a Senior Member of IEEE and a Fellow of ASME. Dr. Jablokow is the architect of a unique 4-course module focused on creativity and problem solving leadership and is currently developing a new methodology for cognition-based design. She is one of three instructors for Penn State's Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Creativity, Innovation, and Change, and she is the founding director of the Problem Solving Research Group, whose 50+ collaborating members include faculty and students from several universities, as well as industrial representatives, military leaders, and corporate consultants. Prof. Seda Yilmaz, Iowa State UniversityDr. Yilmaz is an Assistant Professor of Industrial Design. She teaches design studios and lecture courses on developing creativity and research skills. Her current research focuses on identifying impacts of different factors on ideation of designers and engineers, developing instructional materials for design ideation, and foundations of innovation. She often conducts workshops on design thinking to a diverse range of groups including student and professional engineers and faculty member from different universities. She received her PhD degree in Design Science in 2010 from University of Michigan. She is also a faculty in Human Computer Interaction Graduate Program and the ISU Site Director for Center for e-Design.c American Society for Engineering Education, 2015Page 26.734.1 Exploring the Effects of Problem Framing on Solution Shifts:A Case Analysis AbstractThe 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 extent to which an idea works within the explicitly stated and commonly understood bounds of a problem, versus moves beyond those bounds. Thirteen prospective engineering students participated in the study. Students were first given a problem statement framed in a way that didn't encourage any particular type of solution. The students were asked to generate solutions to the problem...

Case Studies of Problem Exploration Processes in Engineering Design

“…Altering perspectives about a problem description to reveal patterns of reasoning and problem solving that are associated with a particular way of "seeing" the problem, and leading to a possibility to "act" within the situation 11,14,[30][31][32][33] Problem defining…”

The Prototype for X (PFX) Framework: Assessing Its Impact on Students' Prototyping Awareness

“…The DPF is grounded in research on cognitive styles and problem framing, and it was originally used to understand how the framing of a design challenge affects ideation and solution generation 67,68 . The DPF breaks design challenges into three components: (1) context, (2) need, and (3) goal.…”

“…Context refers to who needs a solution and what purpose the solution serves, need refers to functional requirements and constraints of the design challenge, and goal refers to the instructions used to generate ideas and the metrics used to evaluate those ideas. In an experiment studying the effect of DPF on ideation metrics such as paradigm relatedness, researchers demonstrated that the DPF can successfully shift students' ideas based on the framework provided 68 . Because our work is exploring prototyping methods, we adapted the DPF into three separate frames, one for each of our three lenses (i.e., desirability, feasibility, and viability); the problem frames used in this study are shown in Appendix A.…”

Using Paradigm-Relatedness to Measure Design Ideation Shifts

“…In our prior work, we utilized individual's reflections on their ideation process to qualitatively characterize their approach and how that approach changed from on situation to the next. 7 We build on that work by focusing this study on developing a quantitative measure for assessing a shift strictly in terms of the design outcomes that the individual exhibits-the ideas that they produce in different design situations. To measure an ideation shift, one first needs to understand what is someone's baseline/default outcomes in some neutral situation.…”