Collaborative Research: Learning Preferences and Domain Differences in Design Fixation

在正规的工程和设计教育中学习设计往往涉及到以现有设计为例进行研究。研究表明，在提出设计问题时使用图例可以支持工程原理和设计约束的学习。但它也会让设计师和工程设计专业的学生倾向于复制他们看到的例子，即使有明确的指示不要这样做，而不是寻找创新的替代解决方案。这种现象被称为设计固执--倾向于坚持先前的想法或解决问题的方案。设计定势是产生新的设计思想和创造性解决问题的重要障碍。耐人寻味的是，关于工程教育的初步研究表明，在对图画例子表现出对设计的执着的倾向上，存在学科差异，工业设计师明显不像机械工程师那样执着。这个项目是由德雷克塞尔大学的认知神经科学研究人员和北卡罗来纳大学的设计科学家合作完成的，目的是关注这种差异，以此作为理解设计固定背后的认知和神经过程的一种手段。驱动假说是，作为训练的结果，机械工程专业的学生更有可能集中注意力，因为他们不太容易借鉴抽象的原则。这些研究将结合不同设计学科的一年级和四年级本科生的行为和脑成像研究。这一项目的结果将有可能推广到STEM教育的大部分领域，为课程的制定提供信息，以避免设计定势。这个奖项是由EHR核心研究(ECR)项目颁发的，该项目支持推进STEM学习基础研究文献的工作。本项目将借鉴认知科学、认知神经科学、工程教育和设计科学的研究文献，考察本科工业设计和机械工程专业的学生在表现出设计固定的倾向上存在差异的前提，以及这些差异源于强调前者学科的抽象(基于规则)学习和后者的基于范例的学习的教学。该项目将检验学生在概念构建过程中的差异，通过行为和神经测量捕捉到的差异是否可以预测设计注视模式。研究人员将从一年级和大四的工业设计和机械工程专业的学生那里收集关于设计固定任务和控制设计任务的多模式数据。他们将通过(A)根据已建立的设计分类方案对草图进行编码，以及(B)根据已建立的设计功能-行为-结构(FBS)本体对语言协议进行编码，来量化设计固定行为。然后，将使用FBS本体分割和语言协议编码来分析设计、固定和控制任务期间的神经反应。然后，两个学科的学生在学习倾向上的行为和神经差异-基于规则和基于样本-将被用来预测设计固定中的行为和神经差异。最终，调查人员的目标是提出一种以认知神经科学和设计理论和实践为基础的设计固定的机械描述，这将为教学干预的发展提供信息。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Learning to design in formal engineering and design education often involves the study of existing designs as examples. Research has shown that the use of pictorial examples during the presentation of design problems can support the learning of engineering principles and design constraints. But it can also bias designers and engineering design students toward replicating the examples they were shown, even in the presence of explicit instructions not to do so, rather than seeking innovative alternative solutions. This phenomenon is known as design fixation—the tendency to adhere to elements of prior ideas or solutions to a problem. Design fixation is a significant barrier to the generation of new design ideas and creative problem solving. Intriguingly, preliminary research on engineering education has suggested there is a disciplinary difference in the tendency to show design fixation to pictorial examples, such that industrial designers are markedly less likely to fixate than are mechanical engineers. The goal of this project, a collaboration between cognitive neuroscience researchers at Drexel University and design scientists at the University of North Carolina, is to focus on this difference as a means of understanding the cognitive and neural processes underlying design fixation. The driving hypothesis is that, as a result of their training, mechanical engineering students are more likely to fixate because they are less apt to draw on abstract principles. The studies will involve a combination of behavioral and brain imaging studies of first year and fourth year undergraduate students in different design disciplines. The results of this project will have the potential to generalize across much of STEM education by informing the development of curricula to ward off design fixation. This award is made by the EHR Core Research (ECR) program, which supports work that advances the fundamental research literature on STEM learning.Drawing on the research literature in cognitive science, cognitive neuroscience, engineering education, and design science, this project will examine the premise that there are differences between undergraduate industrial design and mechanical engineering students in their tendencies to show design fixation and that these differences are arise from instruction that emphasizes the of abstraction (rule-based) learning in the former discipline and exemplar-based learning in the latter. The project will examine whether differences between students during concept building, captured by both behavioral and neural measures, can predict design fixation patterns. The researchers will collect multimodal data from first year and senior industrial design and mechanical engineering students on a design fixation task and a control design task. They will quantify design fixation behaviorally through (a) the coding of sketches according to an established design categorization scheme, and (b) the coding of verbal protocols with the established Function-Behavior-Structure (FBS) ontology for design. The FBS ontology segmentation and coding of verbal protocols will then be used in a novel attempt to analyze neural responses during the design fixation and control tasks. The behavioral and neural differences in learning tendencies – rule-based and exemplar based – between students in the two disciplines will then be used to predict behavioral and neural differences in design fixation. Ultimately, the investigators aim to put forth a mechanistic account of design fixation, grounded in cognitive neuroscience and design theory and practice, that will inform the development of instructional interventions.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.