Understanding the Design Neurocognition of Mechanical Engineers When Designing and Problem-Solving

Abstract

This paper presents results from an experiment to determine brain activation differences between problem-solving and designing of mechanical engineers. The study is part of a research project whose goal is to correlate design cognition with brain behavior across design domains. The study adopted and extended the tasks described in a fMRI study of design cognition and measured brain activation using EEG. By taking the advantage of EEG’s temporal resolution we focus on time-related neural responses during problem-solving compared to design tasks. Statistical analyses indicate increased activation when designing compared to problem-solving. Results of time-related neural responses connected to Brodmann areas cognitive functions, contribute to a better understanding of mechanical engineers’ cognition in open design tasks.

A framework for studying design thinking through measuring designers’ minds, bodies and brains

“…Experiments studying design with EEG measurements can integrate sketching (Nguyen & Zeng 2010;Vieira et al 2019b) and modeling tasks (Kruk et al 2014;Seitamaa-Hakkarainen et al 2016), which is not currently possible with fMRI monitoring (Alexiou et al 2009). Results from early EEG studies of designers are generally consistent with cognitive findings in design thinking research such as differences between problem-solving and open-ended design tasks (Vieira et al 2019a), domain related divergences (Vieira et al 2019b), the effect of expertise in problem solving (Göker 1997) and drawing (Belkofer, Van Hecke & Konopka 2014) and design reasoning defined by a sequence of design moves (Nguyen & Zeng 2010;Nguyen, Nguyen & Zeng 2015, 2019.…”

The neurophysiological activations of mechanical engineers and industrial designers while designing and problem-solving

“…This paper describes a study from a larger research project whose goal is to investigate neurophysiological activation of designers across multiple design domains, namely mechanical engineering, industrial design, graphic design and architecture (Vieira et al 2019a(Vieira et al , 2019b(Vieira et al , 2020a. The study reported in this paper is based on the analysis of mechanical engineers' and industrial designers' neurophysiological activations using an EEG headset in the context of performing problemsolving and design tasks in a laboratory setting.…”

The Neurophysiological Activations of Novice and Experienced Professionals When Designing and Problem-Solving

“…We adopted the blind source separation (BSS) technique based on canonical correlation analysis (CCA) for the removal of muscle artifacts from EEG recordings (De Clercq et al, 2006) adapted to remove the short EMG bursts due to articulation of spoken language (Vos et al, 2010). A detailed description is provided in Vieira et al (2019a). Data analysis included total power values on individual and aggregate levels using MatLab and EEGLab open-source software.…”