Novel strategies for increasing creativity in engineering design

工程设计依赖于人类的认知，心理学中的创造力研究与此有着内在的相关性。虽然心理学研究中用于引出和测量创造力的任务和指标对工程设计的适用性有限，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论严谨性。该计划旨在缩小这一差距，作为发展基于人类认知现代科学的工程设计综合理论和实践的一步。具体而言，本提案侧重于工程设计中的创造性障碍和克服这些障碍的干预措施。主要障碍包括设计固定，在生成概念时过度依赖现有的示例，以及功能固定，无法看到对象最常见的用途之外。功能固定性可以通过心理学研究中的一项标准任务来衡量，即替代用途测试（AUT），它列出了像回形针或砖块这样的普通物体的不同用途。拟议的工作将使AUT适应整合工程相关的问题和指标，并使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，工程专业的学生还是很难确定退役风力涡轮机叶片的替代用途，因为出于安全原因，这些叶片不能在相同的功能中重复使用，也不适合回收和焚烧。认知心理学的研究表明，对AUT性能至关重要的大脑区域与涉及手动工具使用的区域重叠，但风力涡轮机叶片的大尺寸可能会阻止这些区域的激活。通过在风力涡轮机叶片AUT之前使用手动工具AUT，在工程和心理学学生中激活这一领域的初步努力是有希望的。另一种可能的干预措施，以提高创造力，初步的努力表明，设计固定可以通过测量视觉固定或凝视提供的图像作为刺激来检测。因此，设计固定可以通过破坏视觉固定来减少，例如，通过暗示其他视觉活动。与这个新颖而雄心勃勃的研究计划协同的是我最近在多伦多大学创建的心理学和工程学（PsychEng）研究生水平的合作专业化。通过PsychEng，我目前与4名心理学教师合作，其中包括2名参与拟议工作的人员，他们提供神经科学方面的专业知识，并可以使用眼动追踪和神经成像设备。该研究计划中的高素质人员（HQP）将受益于PsychEng，它使心理学家和工程师之间的开放式合作成为可能。这类人员将加强开展和领导跨学科工作的能力。该计划的成果将传播给加拿大及其他地区的研究人员和利益相关者，提高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.