Uncovering Design Strategies: A collection of 77 examples helps students tap their own creativity

摘要

Good ideas are the foundation for successful engineering. The ability to generate novel ideas is essential to innovation and to producing designs that solve practical problems. But how do engineers learn to generate ideas? While there are a few systematic methods available, the existing techniques are not grounded in empirical evidence. Our study examines how engineers, both students and practitioners, come up with design solutions. By understanding how engineers generate ideas, we can develop an empirically based technique to help others learn to do so.