WORK IN PROGRESS: Design Fixation in First-Year Engineering Students' Problem Solving

Idea generation is an essential phase of the engineering design process. It is during this phase that the engineer can develop many possible solutions to address the design constraints, which will later be reduced to the final design solution. However, in some cases engineers may experience design fixation, which could lead to limited creativity and limited design solutions. In this study, design fixation is being explored as first-year engineering students work independently for three hours to design a playground for a fictitious neighborhood. The research team explored the initial idea generation phase of first-year engineering students (N=14) with differing mathematics and design precollege experiences. The results of the quantitative analysis suggest that first-year engineering students in this study can be considered a homogenous group with respect to their mean number of design solutions. The participant's previous mathematical and design knowledge and experiences did not moderate idea generation.