Man In India, 95(2015) © Serials Publications(Special Issue: Researches in Education and Social Sciences)

Address for communication: N. M. M. Rasidi, Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment, UniversitiKebangsaan Malaysia, Malaysia, E-mail: normahani9116@siswa.ukm.edu.my

GENERATION OF IDEA FOR PRODUCT INNOVATION INDESIGN COURSE

N. M. M. Rasidi, S. Abdullah, D. A. Wahab, R. Ramli, M. R. A. Mansor andR. M. Yasin

This study proposed a set of techniques that can be utilized for the identification of students’perceptions toward generating ideas to produce innovative products. The sample of this study consistsof 56 engineering students from the Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, UniversitiKebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), who have taken the Mechanical Engineering Design (KKKM 6034),Design Project (KKKM 4955), and Product Design (KKKP 4274) courses. Statistical analysis revealedthat students preferred to use methods to obtain more ideas by means of reading; observations andinterviews; and using integrated ideas technique that combines the creating ideas techniques and thescreening ideas techniques. The results indicate that, among nine creating ideas techniques,Morphology Analysis, Brainstorming and Mind Mapping, have very high application frequencies.While Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA), havevery high application frequencies in among nine screening ideas technique. Students’ perceptionrevealed that the techniques applied have applicability in providing information for the design process,describing ideas in more detail, as well as generating a wider diversity of ideas.

Keywords: idea generation technique, innovation, design.

Introduction

Idea generation is a key process in critical and creative thinking. It encouragesthinkers to be divergent in their thinking, generate as many potential solutions aspossible, and exhibit skills such as fluency of ideas, originality of thought andflexibility in thinking. The objective of the idea generation phase is to use previouslyacquired knowledge, simple ideas and new information in order to transform thisinformation into something that can be applied on a new situation or problem.According to Hamid (2006), ideas could be obtained in seven different methods:impersonation, interview, exploration, reading, observation, experimentation andexperience. The generation of new ideas is a process that is rooted in individualknowledge, in which each person builds from existing situations and use, regardlessof how novel and unexplored a problem is. According to Girotra et al. (2008), thesuccess of idea generation in innovation usually depends on the quality of the bestopportunity identified. Creating an innovative product requires more than simplyunderstanding the design of an efficient new product development process.Creativity is an essential part of innovation. One of the major concerns amonguniversity students is the method used to generate a greater amount of fruitfulideas, and how to become more creative.

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For both the Mechanical Engineering and Manufacturing Engineeringprogrammes at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), there are three compulsorydesign courses that require students to work in groups in order to improve theircreativity, relevant knowledge, theories and methods, as a learning process increating appropriate ideas and models to develop engineering product designs orsystems. Three design-based courses, namely, Mechanical Engineering Design(KKKM 6034), Design Project (KKKM 4955) and Product Design (KKKP 4274);expose students to the appropriate design processes and methodologies to be used.The design engineering process requires a wide range of information, knowledge,experience, judgement of feasibility, and application of engineering scientificanalysis. The outcome of these courses aims to provide information about thegeneral process for innovative design engineering, which includes systematic andmethodical conceptualizing, creativity, thinking and reasoning, systematic recordingand management of design documentation.

In a preliminary study, Johari et al. (2011) claim that the level of creativityof the fourth year students of the Mechanical Engineering and ManufacturingEngineering programs at UKM is low to average, as reflected in their overallinability to generate ideas. After utilizing several creativity techniques, the nextstudent cohort was more creative, as reflected in their ability to propose ideasand think ‘out of the box’. According to Heong et al. (2011), most technicalstudents have problems and difficulties in generating ideas to create concreteproducts and abstracts during their individual assignment courses, mainly due tosix factors: running out of ideas, lack of information, lack of specific skills,lack of exercise to generate ideas, lack of time, and emotional disturbance. Thisshows that it is effective to apply the idea generation technique in the designprocess.

There are numerous idea generation techniques that have been invented, butonly a few of them are applied often. Therefore, the purpose of this study is toexamine the application frequency of selected guidance to obtain methods andtechniques, as well as their applicability in the context of process and products.

Methodology of Conducting Survey

Questionnaires were distributed to the Mechanical Engineering students duringacademic semester 1 (session 2014/2015), at the Faculty of Engineering and BuiltEnvironment (FKAB), UKM. A total number of 56 students were selected toparticipate in this study. Thirteen of them were Master’s degree students, 32 wereBachelor’s degree students in the Mechanical Engineering Department and 11 werein the Manufacturing Department. All of the students engaged in idea generatingmethods and design processes, and were enrolled in the following design courses:Mechanical Engineering Design (KKKM 6034), Design Project (KKKM 4955)and Product Design (KKKP 4274).

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This work takes a descriptive approach. The questionnaire was divided intothree sections and all question types were closed-ended. Sections A and B consistof the multiple choice questions category, where respondents were restricted tochoose among any of the predefined multiple choice answer in order to identifythe application frequency of the selected methods (Section A) and techniques(Section B) they use for idea generation. Section C comprises a Likert scale questioncategory based on a four point Likert Scale that ranges from strongly disagree tostrongly agree in order to assess the perception about the techniques applicabilityin the contexts of process and products. During the process of developing thequestionnaire, the researcher considered theories regarding idea generation in thecontext of process and product based on the six P’s of creativity proposed by Linet al. (2006) (person, process, product, place, pressure and persuasion).

Analysis of reliability and validity for questionnaire were conducted usingRasch analysis, via the WINSTEPS Version 3.7.2 software. Based on Raschmeasurement model, the reliability acceptable value of Alpha Cronbach’s (á) isbetween 0.71 to 0.99 where this showed that the level of reliability were good.Table 1 showed the interpretation of Alpha Cronbach score for reliability (Bond &Fox , 2007).

TABLE 1: INTERPRETATION OF ALPHA CRONBACH SCORE (BOND & FOX, 2007)

Score of Alpha Cronbach Reliability

0.9 – 1.0 Very good and effective with high consistency level0.7 – 0.8 Good and acceptable0.6 – 0.7 Acceptable<0.6 Item need to repair<0.5 Item need to reject

Findings show the reliability and item separation indices were 0.80 and 2.00respectively. Based on Table 1, value of 0.80 showed that item is good andacceptable. While according to Linacre (2005) when the value of item separationindices is � 2.0 reveal that item will be good and acceptable. The frequency analysisof this study is based on the frequency of selection and percentage of the agreedstatement.

Results and Discussion

Students’ method selection for idea generation was evaluated. The reason for thisattribute is to ensure that the previously mentioned assumptions towards studentsare true. The researchers assume that students obtain their ideas from impersonationof previous project designs. Idea generation requires students’ skills in using anysource to search for and formulate new ideas. The findings indicate that theassumptions are not true; only five students used the impersonation approach, asdepicted in Figure 1.

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Among all the methods, 44 students preferred to read text, pictures, documents,articles, journals, magazines or reference books for finding new ideas to solve theproblem at hand. It has been proven by Shewfelt (2012) that reading widely canformulate a well-prepared mind for idea generation. Observations (38) andinterviews (31) also have high application frequencies, since ideas can be found inone’s daily life (e.g., in news media or conversations). Students also use theexploration (20) approach to obtain ideas. This is prove by Figure 2, which showsthat students use brainstorming, mind mapping and SWOT analysis as explorationtools to generate ideas.

Based on a Table 2, students feel it is very important to use integrated techniquethat combines creating ideas techniques and screening ideas techniques.

TABLE 2: USING OF INTEGRATED TECHNIQUE IN IDEA GENERATIONSORTING BY FREQUENCY

Creating Idea Technique Screening Idea TechniqueMorphology Analysis (49) Quality Function Deployment (QFD) (52)Brainstorming (44) Failure Mode and Effects AnalysisMind Mapping (24) (FMEA) (46)Checklist (7) Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)(15)Pugh’s Model (3) SWOT Analysis (11)Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) (1) Product Design Specification (PDS)(3)5 Whys (10) Positive Material Identification (PMI)(2)Objective Tree (5) Awareness-Trial-Availability-Repeat5W1H(1) Model (ATAR Model) (1)

Function Analysis (1)

Figure 1: Application frequency of selected idea generation method

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The results indicate that three creating idea techniques fall in the upper rank,namely, Morphology Analysis (49), Brainstorming (44) and Mind Mapping (24),as well as two screening idea techniques, which are Quality Function Deplotment(QFD)(52) and Failure Mode and Effect Aanalysis (FMEA)(46).

Figure 2: (a) Highest (b) Lowest application frequency of selected idea generation techniques

In another perspective, QFD, Morphology Analysis and FMEA have very highapplication frequencies, because all three of these techniques apply systematicmethods of functional analysis, which includes design requirements, partscharacteristics and need assessment to identify new combinations of inventionelements in creating new products, and are suitable for the engineering designfield. As proven by Lo et al. (2010), using the integrated technique (QFD andMorphological Analysis) promotes quick generation of innovative concepts. Also,Goncalves et. al (2014) state that using morphological analysis at the beginning ofthe idea generation phase can create new solutions to the problem at hand.Brainstorming also has a high application frequency, mainly because it is the best-known technique by far. Figure 2 (b) shows the less popular techniques studentsuse for idea generation.

Figure 3 shows that all techniques that have been selected and used areconsidered as very applicable techniques in availability of information. Studentsalso indicated that using idea generation techniques can help them to facilitate theprocess of decision making (87.5%), analyze the results (89.3%), identify theproblems (94.6%) and needs (91.1%), and select a final idea; in order to ensure thedesign meets the required specifications (91.1%), achieves the desired goals (89.3%)and helps to make rational decisions (94.7%). This finding is supported by Tohand Miller (2015), who state that ideation tools can help designers generate a largequantity of effective solutions and explore a larger solution space.

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Figure 3: Percentage of students’ perception about the technique applicability in context of process

Figure 4: Percentage of students perception about the technique applicability in context of product

Figure 4 shows that all the techniques that have been selected and used areconsidered as very applicable techniques in throughness, elaboration and diversityof ideas. Respondents also indicate that using idea generation techniques can helpthem to generate more innovative ideas (94.6%) and new creative solutions (94.7%).This in turn would help them to obtain design specifications for achieving feasibility

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of ideas (85.7%), to analyze detailed idea designs (96.4%), and to identify suitablemethods (80.3%) and materials (82.1%). This finding is supported by Herring et.al(2009), who claim that using idea generation techniques may help to stimulatecreative thought, generate more ideas and expand on the solution space.

Conclusion

In the analyses carried out at the end of the study, all of the student candidatesdeclared that ideas can be obtained through reading, observations and interviews.The most frequent techniques applied for idea generation have a systematicapproach, which consists of functions analysis such as Quality Function Deployment(QFD), Morphology Analysis and Failure Mode Effect Analysis (FMEA). Theresults of this study reveal that students feel that it is very important to use integratedtechniques that combine creating ideas techniques and screening ideas techniques.Our results indicate that three creating idea techniques that fall in the upper rankare: Morphology Analysis, Brainstorming and Mind Mapping, as well as twoscreening idea techniques, which are QFD and FMEA. Lastly, the results of students’perception revealed that the techniques applied have applicability in providinginformation for the design process, describing ideas in more detail and generatingdiversity of ideas.

Reference

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