Design heuristics support two modes of idea generation: Initiating ideas and transitioning among concepts

Abstract

Design Heuristics is an empirically driven design ideation tool intended to support variation and novelty in concept generation. The set of heuristics was extracted from observations of professional and novice designers at work, and by analyses of a large set of award-winning products. Through the observations of designers at work, we realized that the subconscious use of heuristics could manifest as either a modification of an existing concept or as the development of a new idea seemingly from scratch. Acknowledging this, we sought to understand how Design Heuristics are best taught to novice designers. In this study, we conducted separate instructional sessions on Design Heuristic use, teaching them as a concept generation technique and as a concept transformation technique. Our results show that both approaches yielded design improvements, though the variation between concepts tends to be larger when using a generative approach. Also, Design Heuristics in both approaches helped students elaborate their concepts, generate new ideas, and encouraged them to push forward with previous ideas. These findings contribute to our knowledge about how to best teach Design Heuristics in the classroom. © 2012 American Society for Engineering Education.