Major: Understanding and Aiding Problem Formulation in Creative Conceptual Design

这个CreativeIT奖的研究目标是研究从设计问题的制定方式中产生的创造力的主要障碍。它将调查为什么一些工程设计师产生创造性的解决方案，而其他人收敛于平凡的，特别是研究制定和表示在早期概念设计中发挥的关键作用。本研究的一个中心思想是，一个可以有效地铸造的问题制定为回答问题，揭示设计任务的关键特征的过程。这些问题包括设计目标和目的，技术问题的相对优先级，设计参数之间的关系，问题陈述中的冲突和差距，以及虚构的约束。这项调查将导致一个动态的表示，问题地图，其目的是表征设计师的理解问题在给定的时间。一个互动的计算援助，让用户构建一个给定的设计问题的问题地图将被开发。该项目与早期的努力不同，它的重点是问题的形成（即预构思），而不仅仅是想法的产生，它强调的是一个交互式系统，使人类处于循环中，而不是用自动化系统取代他们。如果成功的话，这项研究将促进对工程设计中创造力的理解，也应该推广到科学和工程中的其他设计任务。问题定义可能是设计中最关键的部分，因为它决定了搜索空间的边界和拓扑结构，从而决定了可以生成的设计的原创性和质量。因此，这项研究是关键和及时的，具有潜在的广泛影响。互动系统也应该作为一个有用的教育工具，提高新手的创造力。该工具将展示信息技术的力量正在帮助人类创造力。该工具将用于亚利桑那州立大学的设计课程，并将通过互联网广泛分发给其他大学。如果成功的话，这个系统及其背后的原则将改变学徒设计师完成任务的方式，从长远来看，将带来更具创造性的工程实践。因此，我们的工作也将导致在工程设计，奖励创造力的创新教育方法。研究结果将通过正常的学术渠道传播，包括发表论文和在会议上发表演讲。

The research objective of this CreativeIT award is to study the major blocks to creativity that arise from the manner in which design problems are formulated. It will investigate why some engineering designers generate creative solutions while others converge on mundane ones, specifically examining the critical role played by formulation and representation in early conceptual design. A central idea of this research is that one can usefully cast problem formulation as a process of answering questions that reveal key characteristics of the design task. These include questions about design goals and objectives, relative priority of technical issues, relations among design parameters, conflicts and gaps in the problem statement, and fictitious constraints. This investigation will result in a dynamic representation, the Problem Map, which aims to characterize a designer's understanding of a problem at a given time. An interactive computational aid that lets users construct a Problem Map for a given design problem will be developed. The project differs from earlier efforts in that its focus is on problem formulation (that is pre-ideation), not just idea generation, and its emphasis on an interactive system that keeps humans in the loop rather than replacing them with automated systems. If successful, this research will advance understanding of creativity in engineering design, and should also generalize to other design tasks in science and engineering. Problem definition is perhaps the most critical part of design, since it determines the boundaries and topology of the search space and hence determines the originality and quality of designs that can be generated. Hence, this research is critical and timely, with potentially broad impacts. The interactive system should also serve as a useful educational tool that increases creativity in novices. The tool will demonstrate the power of Information Technology is aiding human creativity. The tool will be used in design courses at Arizona State, and will be distributed widely to other universities over the Internet. If successful, this system and the principles that underlie it will change the way that apprentice designers approach their tasks and, in the longer term, lead to more creative engineering practices. Thus, our work will also lead to innovative educational approaches in engineering design that reward creativity. The results will be disseminated through normal academic channels that involve publishing papers and presenting talks at conferences.