Novel strategies for increasing creativity in engineering design

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Engineering design relies on human cognition, where creativity research in psychology is inherently relevant. While the tasks and metrics used in psychology research to elicit and measure creativity have limited applicability to engineering design, creativity research in engineering design tends to lack the theoretical foundation and methodological rigor typical in psychology. The proposed program aims to reduce this gap as a step toward developing a comprehensive theory and practice of engineering design founded on the modern science of human cognition.******Specifically, this proposal focuses on barriers to creativity in engineering design and interventions to overcome them. Key barriers include design fixation, an over-reliance on existing examples while generating concepts, and functional fixedness, an inability to see beyond the most common uses for objects. Functional fixedness can be measured by a standard task in psychology research, the Alternative Uses Test (AUT), which elicits different uses for common objects like a paper clip or brick.******The proposed work will adapt the AUT to integrate engineering-relevant problems and metrics, and reduce functional fixedness using insights from psychology. For example, despite design aids, engineering students struggled to identify alternative uses for retired wind-turbine blades, which cannot be reused in the same function for safety reasons, and are not well-suited for recycling and incineration. Research in cognitive psychology reveals that the brain regions key to AUT performance overlap with regions involved in hand-tool use, but the large size of wind-turbine blades may prevent activation of these regions. Initial efforts to activate this area in engineering and psychology students by preceding wind-turbine-blade AUT with hand-tool AUT are promising.******Informing another possible intervention to increase creativity, initial efforts suggest that design fixation can be detected by measuring visual fixation or gaze on images provided as stimuli. Thus, design fixation could be reduced by disrupting visual fixation, e.g., by cueing alternative visual activity.******Synergistic with this novel and ambitious research program is a graduate-level Collaborative Specialization in Psychology and Engineering (PsychEng) that I recently created at the University of Toronto. Through PsychEng, I currently collaborate with 4 psychology faculty members, including 2 for parts of the proposed work, who offer expertise in neuroscience and access to eye-tracking and neuroimaging equipment.******Highly Qualified Personnel (HQP) in this research program will benefit from PsychEng, which enables open collaboration between psychologists and engineers. Such HQP will have enhanced ability to conduct and lead interdisciplinary work.******Results from this program will be disseminated to researchers and stakeholders in Canada and beyond, enhancing our interdisciplinary capacity to address urgent socio-economic and environmental challenges.**