The Woodruff School

SUMMARY

Freehand sketching has been well documented in literature as a necessary and beneficial skill for engineers. Sketching as a rapid visual representation tool improves communication among team members, offloads working memory, and enables designers to reason with and critique their concepts more rapidly. While research clearly shows that the use of sketching in design is beneficial, there is very little work on how the quality of sketching impacts these benefits. The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the importance of sketching ability and how that ability is leveraged in engineering design. This dissertation is broken down into three studies focused on how to improve engineers’ sketching ability, the impact of sketching ability on idea generation, and the relationship between sketching skill and the frequency of sketching use in design. The first study is focused on how to improve engineers’ sketching ability. Three sketching instruction interventions are investigated: (1) two-point perspective sketching techniques adapted from industrial design, (2) an intelligent tutoring software, called Sketchtivity, designed to provide real-time personalized feedback, and (3) different instruction lengths. These three interventions are all focused on improving freehand sketching abilities for engineers. Sketching plays a particularly critical role in the early stages of design. Specifically, engineering idea generation leverages sketching to rapidly explore new concepts. The second study investigates the relationship between idea generation ability and sketching ability. Improved sketching skill could likely be leveraged for faster representation and easier access to creative concepts. Lastly, sketching skill is likely related to how frequently engineers sketch in design – if an individual has strong sketching skills, they are more likely to use those skills in practice. The final study investigates the impact of sketching skill on a designer’s propensity for sketching in practice through a longitudinal study examining sketch skill in a design class and sketching frequency on subsequent design projects. This dissertation fills a critical gap in literature bringing understanding to the impacts of freehand sketching skill on engineering design and how engineers can easily improve these skills.

SUBJECT:	Ph.D. Proposal Presentation

BY:	Morgan Weaver

TIME:	Wednesday, December 8, 2021, 2:00 p.m.

PLACE:	https://bluejeans.com/188402201/6919,

TITLE:	Improving Engineering Sketching Abilities and the Benefits for Engineering Design

COMMITTEE:	Dr. Julie Linsey, Chair (ME) Dr. Bert Bras (ME) Dr. Denis Dorozhkin (ME) Dr. Vimal Viswanathan (San Jose State University) Dr. Kerrie Douglas (Purdue University)

SUMMARY Freehand sketching has been well documented in literature as a necessary and beneficial skill for engineers. Sketching as a rapid visual representation tool improves communication among team members, offloads working memory, and enables designers to reason with and critique their concepts more rapidly. While research clearly shows that the use of sketching in design is beneficial, there is very little work on how the quality of sketching impacts these benefits. The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the importance of sketching ability and how that ability is leveraged in engineering design. This dissertation is broken down into three studies focused on how to improve engineers’ sketching ability, the impact of sketching ability on idea generation, and the relationship between sketching skill and the frequency of sketching use in design. The first study is focused on how to improve engineers’ sketching ability. Three sketching instruction interventions are investigated: (1) two-point perspective sketching techniques adapted from industrial design, (2) an intelligent tutoring software, called Sketchtivity, designed to provide real-time personalized feedback, and (3) different instruction lengths. These three interventions are all focused on improving freehand sketching abilities for engineers. Sketching plays a particularly critical role in the early stages of design. Specifically, engineering idea generation leverages sketching to rapidly explore new concepts. The second study investigates the relationship between idea generation ability and sketching ability. Improved sketching skill could likely be leveraged for faster representation and easier access to creative concepts. Lastly, sketching skill is likely related to how frequently engineers sketch in design – if an individual has strong sketching skills, they are more likely to use those skills in practice. The final study investigates the impact of sketching skill on a designer’s propensity for sketching in practice through a longitudinal study examining sketch skill in a design class and sketching frequency on subsequent design projects. This dissertation fills a critical gap in literature bringing understanding to the impacts of freehand sketching skill on engineering design and how engineers can easily improve these skills.