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Dissecting Creativity: How Dissection Virtuality, Analogical Distance, and Product Complexity Impact Creativity and Self-Efficacy

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Design Computing and Cognition '16

Abstract

Product dissection has been adopted in engineering education as a means to benchmark existing products and inspire new design ideas. Despite widespread adoption of dissection practices, however, little is known about the effectiveness of the widely varying approaches of dissection for encouraging creativity. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to identify the impact of dissection virtuality, analogical distance, and product complexity on creativity and self-efficacy through a factorial experiment with 30 engineering students. The results show that virtual dissection can be used to increase student creativity over physical dissection but this increase is moderated by the complexity and analogical distance of the product being dissected. CSE was not significantly impacted in the study. These results are used to derive implications for dissection practices in engineering education and drive future research that explores the multifaceted role of analogical distance in example-based design practices.

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Acknowledgements

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 14630009. We would also like to thank our undergraduate research assistant Clayton Meisel for his help in this project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA

    E. M. Starkey, A. S. McKay, S. T. Hunter & S. R. Miller

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  1. E. M. Starkey
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  2. A. S. McKay
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  3. S. T. Hunter
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  4. S. R. Miller
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Correspondence to S. R. Miller .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and School of Architecture, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, North Carolina, USA

    John. S Gero

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Starkey, E.M., McKay, A.S., Hunter, S.T., Miller, S.R. (2017). Dissecting Creativity: How Dissection Virtuality, Analogical Distance, and Product Complexity Impact Creativity and Self-Efficacy. In: Gero, J. (eds) Design Computing and Cognition '16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44989-0_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44989-0_4

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-44988-3

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