Comparing the Effects of Design Interventions on the Quality of Design Concepts As a Reflection of Ideation Flexibility

Various interventions (i.e., methods and tools that guide design work) have been developed to support successful idea generation in a design process. Our previous research explored the impacts of three such design interventions: cognitive-style based teaming, problem framing, and design heuristics. In this work, we looked across these interventions to compare their effects on students’ design ideas. In particular, 966 design ideas collected from 152 undergraduate students in engineering and industrial design from two Midwestern universities were analyzed to investigate their quality with and without each design intervention. Statistically significant differences were observed for the teaming and problem framing interventions. This study has implications for design educators in how design interventions might be used to affect students’ design solutions.