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Published May 2007 | Published
Journal Article Open

An Analysis of Sketching Skill and Its Role in Early Stage Engineering Design

Abstract

Previous studies have demonstrated the importance of sketching in design cognition, particularly in the early stages of engineering design. The goal of this preliminary study is to consider the role of a designer's sketching ability and to examine the potential link between sketching skill and measures of engineering design performance. Sketching ability was evaluated on three distinct aspects relevant to engineering design: visual recall, rendering, and novel visualization. These evaluations were correlated with each other and with measures for sketch fluency, reviewer ranking, and design project outcome. The results of this study suggest that sketching skill is not comprehensive nor is it solely task based. Rather, a designer's sketching ability lies between these two poles. Positive correlations were found between the quantity of sketches produced and two of the sketching skills that emphasize drawing facility, but a negative correlation was found between sketch quantity and a skill related to mechanism visualization. No conclusive correlations were found between the sketching skills and design outcome and reviewer ranking. This study's findings suggest an important interplay between a designer's ability to sketch and their ability to visualize in their heads or through prototypes. Results also suggest that designers who are given sketch instruction tended to draw more overall.

Additional Information

© 2007 American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Received 31 December 2005; revised 19 May 2006. Contributed by the Design Theory and Methodology Committee of ASME for publication in the Journal of Mechanical Design. Manuscript received December 31, 2005; final manuscript received May 19, 2006. Review conducted by Clive L. Dym. Paper presented at the ASME 2005 Design Engineering Technical Conference and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference (DETC2005), September 24–28, 2005, Long Beach, California, USA. The authors gratefully acknowledge Prof. Joel Burdick, the instructor of the introductory engineering design course at the California Institute of Technology, and the design students who are the basis of this research.

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August 19, 2023
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