2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This research paper seeks to understand how introducing different engineering ideation methods to participants during a problem-solving workshop impacts participant’s productivity, creativity, and confidence in their ideas. Prior research shows improvement in creativity and productivity over the course of a problem-solving class. The work in this paper expands from that to show the impact of different specific ideation methods and how the introduced methods change the participant’s ideation processes during a short problem-solving session.

The data for this project will be collected during two different workshop sessions. The first workshop was conducted for 11 senior engineering students of various majors from a medium-sized university in Portland, OR, as part of an optional class breakout session. The second workshop will be conducted in a similar manner with a team of practicing engineers at a medium-sized manufacturing company as part of a monthly meeting to discuss new research related to the company. Before beginning, participants were given a pre-session survey to assess their current comfort level with engineering problem-solving methods and their current ideation process. Following this, participants were assigned an engineering challenge of improving pedestrian or vehicle safety. This broad-natured challenge was chosen because it is something with which each participant has had first-hand experience. Participants were given 15 minutes to solve this challenge without being introduced to any ideation method. Following this, participants were then asked to continue to solve the engineering design challenge for an additional 15 minutes using an assigned ideation method. The methods introduced and assigned were Chindogu, Mind-Mapping, Biomimicry, Rapid Ideation, or no method. These methods were chosen because they are unique from each other and are the foundation for many other problem-solving techniques. Finally, participants were asked to complete a post-session survey to assess their opinions related to their brainstorming and how it was impacted by the given ideation method.

Trends in the data related to productivity, creativity, and confidence were analyzed from the post-session survey. A Likert scale of 1-10 was used, with 10 meaning significant improvement and 1 meaning no improvement. From the student workshop, participants who were assigned a new problem-solving method averaged a 5.3±1.9 for increase in productivity, an 8±2.8 for increase in creativity, and 6.4±2.1 for increase in confidence in their ideas. The practicing engineering group will be evaluated in a similar manner after their session.

This study highlights why it is important to teach a variety of problem- solving methods in engineering. The trends within this study show that, even before being assigned to a problem-solving method, people solve problems in diverse ways. However, by introducing people to different ideation methods, this data suggests that it is possible to expand their problem-solving abilities to be more productive, creative, and confident with their ideas. If these methods are introduced at the undergraduate level, students may be able to utilize a larger variety of problem-solving methods in the workforce, leading to a larger diversity of solutions to the variety of challenges they face.