Improving Engineering Sketching Abilities and the Benefits for Engineering Design
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Weaver, Morgan Boone
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Abstract
Freehand sketching is a critical tool for engineering design. Particularly during conceptual design, sketching is leveraged for many essential tasks. Freehand sketches allow a designer to communicate complex or ambiguous ideas to teammates, sketching offloads working memory allowing a designer to develop further concepts, and freehand sketching supports a critical feedback loop that enables design decisions to be made in real time. Sketching is a free and flexible tool for visual representation, and more frequent sketching has been shown to correlate with positive design outcomes. However, even given the importance of sketching for the design process, sketching is only taught minimally (as little as three weeks of instruction in a single course) in the engineering curriculum. It has been noted in literature for some time that engineers have the need for both formal drafting skills and informal freehand sketching skills. Given the lack of focus on developing this critical skill, do engineers have the skills necessary to reap the benefits of sketching in the design process? This dissertation seeks to further understand the importance of sketching skills for engineering design. The topic is approached from two sides: how to improve sketching education and understanding the benefits of sketching skills for engineers. The first study explores improving sketching skills through modified freehand sketching instruction, an intelligent tutoring software for sketching, and instruction length. The second study looks at the relationship between sketching skills and idea generation abilities. The final study examines sketching behavior in design project courses, and to what extent they are predicted by sketching skills and other measures. The results of this dissertation provide the costs of resources associated with improving sketching skills and benefits gleaned from improving them. This cost-benefit comparison helps to inform the importance of practicing sketching skills for engineers and engineering education.
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2023-04-27
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Dissertation