TY - GEN
T1 - It rings a bell! Memory’s impact on information utilization by novice designers in the early design process
AU - Mertens, Attakias T.
AU - Toh, Christine A.
N1 - Funding Information:
This material is based upon work supported by the Nebraska Research Initiative under Grant No. 4132080250.
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2019 ASME.
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - Research in new product design still lacks an understanding of how the types of information used by designers can lead to more successful designs and what cognitive components are involved in the process of generating new ideas. Some theories have arisen that focus on memory usage that could have an impact in idea generation early on in the design process. As a first step to address this gap, an Information Archetypes Framework was developed in previous work to outline the different dimensions and levels of information commonly used by designers. This framework forms the basis of the current study, focused on identifying the underlying cognitive processes that are active during the design process. To accomplish this, undergraduate students were recruited from the University of Nebraska-Omaha. During the study, participants were presented a design problem, given information pieces that corresponded to the Information Archetypes Framework, and asked to generate ideas for a solution. Students were then asked to recall the information pieces from memory. Participants’ data were analyzed using Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC) for relevant cognitive mechanisms. Scores from LIWC captured the linguistic properties of information pieces and generated ideas, and this study was able to demonstrate that memory usage has both semantic and linguistic components that emerge during the conceptual design process.
AB - Research in new product design still lacks an understanding of how the types of information used by designers can lead to more successful designs and what cognitive components are involved in the process of generating new ideas. Some theories have arisen that focus on memory usage that could have an impact in idea generation early on in the design process. As a first step to address this gap, an Information Archetypes Framework was developed in previous work to outline the different dimensions and levels of information commonly used by designers. This framework forms the basis of the current study, focused on identifying the underlying cognitive processes that are active during the design process. To accomplish this, undergraduate students were recruited from the University of Nebraska-Omaha. During the study, participants were presented a design problem, given information pieces that corresponded to the Information Archetypes Framework, and asked to generate ideas for a solution. Students were then asked to recall the information pieces from memory. Participants’ data were analyzed using Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC) for relevant cognitive mechanisms. Scores from LIWC captured the linguistic properties of information pieces and generated ideas, and this study was able to demonstrate that memory usage has both semantic and linguistic components that emerge during the conceptual design process.
KW - Cognition
KW - Design
KW - Design process
KW - Idea generation
KW - Information
KW - Linguistic properties
KW - Memory
KW - Novices
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85076432487&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85076432487&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1115/DETC2019-97699
DO - 10.1115/DETC2019-97699
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85076432487
T3 - Proceedings of the ASME Design Engineering Technical Conference
BT - 31st International Conference on Design Theory and Methodology
PB - American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
T2 - ASME 2019 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, IDETC-CIE 2019
Y2 - 18 August 2019 through 21 August 2019
ER -