Techniques To Enhance Concept Generation And Develop Creativity

The concept generation (CG) step in the design process presents tremendous and unique opportunities for enhancing creativity in students. Other researchers have developed a variety of techniques specifically to aid in the CG or ideation process. Based on their work, as well as original work we have done in this area, we have developed a suite of CG techniques for use by students in design classes. The techniques include a modified 6-3-5 technique, functional decomposition combined with morphological analysis, TIPS/TRIZ, a method to produce products with the ability to transform, a search for cross-domain or far-field analogies, implementation of creativity principles from historical innovators and a design by analogy technique using a WordNet-based search procedure. Various sets of these CG techniques have been implemented at both the University of Texas and the US Air Force Academy. In addition, in an effort to assess the ability of these techniques to enhance creativity in our students, we implemented a survey that attempts to measure creativity before and after the students learned to use the CG techniques. Our results show that the implementation of the suite of CG techniques produces a increased quantity and innovation in the concepts. Also, the assessment indicates that exposure to these CG techniques increases creativity when compared to a control group that were not exposed to the suite of CG techniques.