A Creativity Environment for Educational Engineering Projects when Developing an Innovative Product: A Case Study

Abstract

This article presents a unified approach in engineering design educationin the faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Mechatronics at theUniversity of Applied Sciences, Deggendorf, Germany. The describedapproach aims at providing undergraduate students a creativitystimulating environment by means of specific guidelines for conductingengineering design projects which are compulsory within their studies.The proposed structure is based on existing design methodologies havingthe possibility of embedding proper creativity techniques along hecourse of projects. Eventually, by taking advantage of the proposedguideline frame, a case study for the development of an innovativeproduct is described.