Influence of Different Representation of Requirements on Idea Generation: An Experimental Study

Abstract

The objective of this research is to understand how different representations of requirements influence idea generation in terms of quantity, addressment, sketch detail, novelty, and variety of conceptual sketches. Requirements are statements of need, desires, and wishes of the stakeholders that are used by engineers to frame the problem. Essentially, requirements are the raison d’etre for any engineering project. As the requirements document provides constraints and criteria for a design, it defines and determines the success of a project. While there is research studying the effect of requirements on the conceptual sketch, little study has focused one the impact of different requirement representations on solution development. An experimental study was conducted with 52 fourth year mechanical engineering undergraduate students. Two design problems were formulated with three different representations: a problem statement with embedded requirements, a problem statement and a traditional requirement list, and a problem statement with contextualized scrum stories. Each student was provided each design problems with two different representations of requirements. It was found that the use of contextualized scrum story representations significantly affected the conceptual sketch in the novelty of solution fragments and addressment of requirements, while no significant change in variety, sketch detail, and quantity was seen. Also, the contextualized representation positively affected all metrics but the sketch quantity. Finally, it was found that quantity is not directly related to the number of requirements addressed in the sketches.