Initial Investigation of Analytic Hierarchy Process to Teach Creativity in Design and Engineering

This paper discusses the importance of, and challenges to, including design creativity in undergraduate curriculum to engage and encourage students to think creatively in design and engineering. Investigators are exploring how and why the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method facilitates a creative process, overcomes obstacles to creativity and changes students’ perceptions to explore creative design solutions. An AHP-based creativity process is developed and implemented in three different case studies. Lessons learned from these initial trials are discussed herein and will contribute to a detailed investigation to assess the effectiveness of the proposed AHP-based design process to foster an environment for engineering students to think creatively and to produce creative solutions.