Enabling creativity in capstone design
Lynne A. Slivovsky, Albert A. Liddicoat, Christopher M. Clark, Jim Widmann, Joe Mello, Brian Self · 2007
Our two-quarter senior design class provides teams of students with loosely-defined real-world design projects of significant scope. With an emphasis on the open-ended nature of these design projects it is necessary to create an atmosphere conducive towards open-minded and unconstrained thinking. A number of activities and assignments have been designed for our students to enable creative thinking, especially in the early stages of the design process. These include: team-building exercises to elicit trust between teammates and build awareness of and respect for each others differences in backgrounds and expertise, mini Speed Design exercises to stimulate creative thinking under time constraints, and the development of Project Personas for students to "walk a mile" in their customers' shoes. All are integrated into the class at times apropos to the various stages of the design process.