Novel strategies for increasing creativity in engineering design

工程设计依赖于人的认知，而心理学中的创造力研究具有内在的关联性。虽然心理学研究中用于激发和测量创造力的任务和测量方法在工程设计中的适用性有限，但工程设计中的创造力研究往往缺乏心理学中典型的理论基础和方法严谨性。拟议的计划旨在缩小这一差距，作为发展以现代人类认知科学为基础的全面工程设计理论和实践的一步。具体地说，这项建议侧重于工程设计中的创造力障碍和克服这些障碍的干预措施。主要障碍包括设计固执，在产生概念时过度依赖现有的例子，以及功能固执，即无法看到物体最常见的用途之外的东西。功能固定性可以通过心理学研究中的一项标准任务--替代使用测试(AUT)来衡量，它会引出回形针或砖头等常见物品的不同用途。拟议的工作将使AUT适应于集成与工程相关的问题和指标，并利用心理学的见解减少功能固定性。例如，尽管有设计辅助工具，工科学生仍在努力寻找退役风力涡轮机叶片的替代用途，出于安全原因，这些叶片不能在相同的功能中重复使用，也不太适合回收和焚烧。认知心理学的研究表明，影响AUT表现的大脑区域与使用手动工具的区域重叠，但风力涡轮机叶片的大小可能会阻止这些区域的激活。在工程学和心理学专业的学生中，通过在风力机叶片AUT之前用手工工具AUT来激活这一领域的初步努力是有希望的。最初的努力表明，设计注视可以通过测量视觉注视或凝视作为刺激提供的图像来检测，这是另一种可能的提高创造力的干预措施。因此，可以通过扰乱视觉注视来减少设计注视，例如通过提示可选的视觉活动。与这一新颖而雄心勃勃的研究项目相结合的是我最近在多伦多大学创建的研究生级别的心理学与工程学协作专业。目前，我与4名心理学教员合作，其中包括两名负责部分拟议工作的心理学教员，他们提供神经科学方面的专业知识，并提供眼球跟踪和神经成像设备。这项研究计划中的高素质人员(HQP)将受益于心理工程，这使得心理学家和工程师之间能够进行开放的合作。这样的HQP将增强领导和领导跨学科工作的能力。该项目的成果将传播给加拿大国内外的研究人员和利益相关者，增强我们应对紧迫的社会经济和环境挑战的跨学科能力。

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.