SUMMARY

The goal of this work is to study the way student designers use heuristics to effectively design for laser cut assemblies. With the recent advent of academic makerspaces, digital fabrication tools like laser cutters are a relatively new addition to the classroom. Therefore, there is a gap in formal education or training on these tools, and students can find it challenging to design effectively for them. A study was carried out to investigate the way students apply heuristics to redesign laser cut assemblies when received in different modalities. All participants were given an identical lecture on laser cutter heuristics. Then, a redesign problem was presented to students, and three different experimental groups were given the heuristics to use in different modalities: text only, text with visual aides, and text with tactile aides. The novelty and quality of each of the resulting redesigns was evaluated. It was hypothesized that participants will have more difficulty interpreting and applying the text only heuristics, lowering the quality of their redesigned solutions, relative to the other two conditions. It was also hypothesized that participants will experience fixation caused by interacting with the tactile aides, leading to lower novelty of their redesigned solutions, relative to the other two conditions. Results showed that modality played a significant role in participants’ feelings of self-efficacy after the intervention, as well as in their understanding of laser cutter design skills when responding to quiz style questions. However, results from participants’ designs were inconclusive as to whether or not the intervention and varying modality helped the participants.