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Published 2005 | Published
Book Section - Chapter Open

Does Sketching Skill Relate to Good Design?

Abstract

Sketching is an activity that takes place throughout the engineering design process, and is often linked to design cognition. This preliminary study identifies different skills that contribute to a designer's sketching ability and explores how those skills might be related to sketch fluency and design outcome. A positive correlation was found between the quantity of sketches produced and sketch skills that emphasize drawing facility, but a negative correlation was found between sketch quantity and a skill related to mechanism visualization. Sketching is sometimes considered a generic skill, but this study suggests that there are differences among the different types of sketching skills in the context of engineering design. No notable relationship was found between sketching ability and design outcome. Results also suggest that students provided with explicit instruction in sketching tended to draw more overall, although there are likely many other factors involved.

Additional Information

© 2005 American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support and guidance of the Prof. Joel Burdick and Prof. Erik Antonsson at the California Institute of Technology, and the commendable design efforts of the students that are the basis of this research. The authors would further like to thank Prof. Karl Grote and Dr. Curtis Collins for their professional opinions.

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August 19, 2023
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October 24, 2023