Grant Recipients
Robert Hunter, Systems Design Engineering
Jenny Howcroft, Systems Design Engineering
Moojan Ghafurian, Systems Design Engineering
Kate Sellen, Systems Design Engineering
Victoria Kerr, Systems Design Engineering
(Project timeline: January 2026 - June 2027)
Description
The need for engineers to address complex problems highlights creativity as a critical skill that must be cultivated in higher education and beyond. GenAI which can generate images and naturalistic text are already being used as creative aids in the design process. However, current results regarding their efficacy are mixed and tend to point towards prompting skill as an indicator of success.
This research aims to
- Develop GenAI usage strategies that could enhance the creativity of design teams
- Create a workshop or course activity where students can explore these strategies to enhance their AI and design literacies.
The effectiveness of different strategies will be evaluated using a validated creativity measure, as well as student reflections. This research will advance knowledge about the effects of training strategies on GenAI use in concept generation and create streamlined skill building opportunities for students which could be applied across engineering and architecture.
Research Questions
The intended student learning outcomes are to:
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Increase GenAI literacy through understanding the strengths and limitations of this technology as a creativity tool.
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Practice applying different design ideation methods and explore associated GenAI prompting strategies.
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Evaluate ethical and legal concerns of GenAI usage, especially intellectual property as it pertains to concept generation.
The intended project outcomes and research questions are:
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Understand the types of prompting strategies and ideation methods which produce the greatest functional creativity in design concepts.
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RQ1: What combination of prompting strategy and ideation technique produce the most creative outputs?
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RQ2: Does training on prompting plus ideation techniques improve human-GenAI co-creative outputs.
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Understand student perceptions of GenAI as a creative aid.
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RQ3: What – if any – value do students perceive from GenAI co-conceptualization?
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RQ4: How do students conceptualize the ethical use of GenAI and its relationship to intellectual property?