The Influence of Learning Strategies and Performance Strategies upon Engineering Design

摘要

A study arising from previous work on electronic hardware design is described. The studies covered are: (a) Subjects from the previous study and a few others extended the original experiment; (b) A computer program linked to a display and control console through A/D and D/A convertors provided an alternative, though overall isomorphic, design task; (c) Subjects performed in a controlled manner, a less restrictive design task; to design intruder alarm systems; and (d) A small group of subjects performed the intruder alarm system task, in less controlled conditions, but at leisure. In all cases, subjects were pretested for conceptual style. There are certain clear, but quite complex relations between the test profiles of conceptual style and the methods of design and one score variable is useful as a predictor of design ability. However, the connection is complex; for example, there is a different relation in the hardware and the software programming tasks ((a) and (b)). In the intruder alarm task ((c) and (d)), versatile subjects adopt a diverse but systematic approach; the others may or may not have diversity, but are not systematic (they do not generate sensible design principles). If enough time is allowed versatile subjects and, in one sense, good designers will continue to produce essentially different designs over a time of several months, (study (d)) but this effect is not evident under more restrictive conditions (study (c)).