Evaluation of Collaborative Sketching (C-Sketch) as an Idea Generation Technique for Engineering Design

This paper presents the first evaluation of a technique for concept generation in a collaborative engineering design setting (C-Sketch). A survey of relevant literature provides the foundation for this evaluation. This review includes the underlying sciences of idea generation and the issues directly related, such as cognitive models for creativity problem solving, roles of images, sketches, and a survey of “blocks and tackles” in idea generation methods. The paper reviews both the intrinsic properties of C-Sketch and the results of comparative studies. This analysis is based on results from experiments on progressive idea generation methods conducted over five years at the Design Automation Lab at Arizona State University and other experiments found in the literature. The intrinsic properties examined are provocative stimuli, feedback, design fixation, and the method variables of C-Sketch. The comparative studies analyze C-Sketch and other methods of the same class and type, namely Method 6-3-5 and Gallery method. This paper concludes that C-Sketch has intrinsic properties useful in idea generation. Finally, experimental results show the advantage of C-Sketch over Method 6-3-5 and Gallery Method for selected design problems, indicating that C-Sketch is an effective, idea generation tool for the graphically dependent domain of mechanical engineering.