Towards a Science of Innovative Design

工程设计不是一个纯粹的心理过程。成功的设计工程师使用工件和工具将想法转化为完成的设计。在过去的几十年里，工程师可以使用的工具和工件的数量几乎是无限的。这些工具包括绘图程序、定量建模软件、速写纸、CAD程序和原型设备。尽管它们在支持创造力和创新方面很重要，但人们对工具在支持创新设计的认知过程中的作用知之甚少。在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，Schunn博士和Novell博士将研究工具和人工制品在创新设计中的作用。他们的研究团队将认知科学理论和方法的优势与创新设计教育的最佳实践相结合。调查人员将进行大规模实验，收集约2500小时的视频数据。这些数据将记录大约50个本科和研究生水平的工程设计团队的设计活动。这些数据将被战略性地采样，以便为与设计工具结合的认知处理的本质进行更深入的编码工作建立有希望的方向。目标是确定工具、工件和认知的组合，从而产生更具创新性的设计结果。

Engineering design is not a purely mental process. Successful design engineers move from ideas to completed designs using artifacts and tools. Over the past several decades, the number of tools and artifacts available to engineers has become virtually limitless. These tools include drawing programs, quantitative modeling software, sketch paper, CAD programs, and prototyping facilities. Despite their importance for supporting creativity and innovation, little is known about the role of tools in supporting the cognitive processes of innovative design.With support of the National Science Foundation, Dr. Schunn and Dr. Novell will investigate the roles of tools and artifacts in the creation of innovative designs. Their research team combines the strengths of cognitive science theories and methods with best practices in innovative design education. The investigators will conduct a large-scale experiment in which approximately 2500 hours of video data will be collected. These data will capture the design activities of about 50 undergraduate and graduate-level engineering design teams. The data will be strategically sampled in order to establish promising directions for more in-depth coding efforts on the nature of cognitive processing in conjunction with design tools. The goal is to identify the combinations of tools, artifacts, and cognition that lead to more innovative design outcomes.