Innovative Spaces Project
Faculty Mentor Name
Hadi Ali, Kathy Wood
Format Preference
Poster
Abstract
The initial conditions of the collaboration space should never hinder the creativity of the design process. A design space configuration drives behavior, and conversely, the behavior of space users drives configuration. Design spaces should offer signals for users on how to enable the space to inspire the creative act of designing. They should also include infrastructure that smooths the transition between design phases and allows for fluid design processes. This project uses semi-structured interviews with faculty and student participants in a cross-sectional study in which design-based engineering courses take place. These interviews will be coded using a mix of critical incident methods and artifact elicitation to assess students' and professors' awareness of the effects of the design environment on the design process, quality assessment, and originality. Multiple interviews have been conducted with senior engineering students in preliminary and detail design phases of their capstone design courses. These interviews were with students of varying engineering specialties to analyze the differences in the design needs of different majors from Aerospace to Software Engineering. Key observations have been gathered from these interviews identifying key aspects of the design environment that aid students' ability to efficiently design and manufacture high-quality, original solutions as well as objects in their environments that hinder their ability to work innovatively and collaboratively.
Innovative Spaces Project
The initial conditions of the collaboration space should never hinder the creativity of the design process. A design space configuration drives behavior, and conversely, the behavior of space users drives configuration. Design spaces should offer signals for users on how to enable the space to inspire the creative act of designing. They should also include infrastructure that smooths the transition between design phases and allows for fluid design processes. This project uses semi-structured interviews with faculty and student participants in a cross-sectional study in which design-based engineering courses take place. These interviews will be coded using a mix of critical incident methods and artifact elicitation to assess students' and professors' awareness of the effects of the design environment on the design process, quality assessment, and originality. Multiple interviews have been conducted with senior engineering students in preliminary and detail design phases of their capstone design courses. These interviews were with students of varying engineering specialties to analyze the differences in the design needs of different majors from Aerospace to Software Engineering. Key observations have been gathered from these interviews identifying key aspects of the design environment that aid students' ability to efficiently design and manufacture high-quality, original solutions as well as objects in their environments that hinder their ability to work innovatively and collaboratively.