An experimental study: analyzing requirement type influence on novelty and variety of generated solutions

Abstract

This paper examines the influence of requirement types on the novelty and variety of generated design solutions as studied through a controlled user study experiment. A controlled group of students was given a burrito folder design problem with no requirements and asked to sketch solutions. Three experimental groups given different requirement treatments were also asked to sketch solutions for the same design problem. The experimental conditions were functional requirements, nonfunctional requirements, and randomly mixed requirements. Analysis of the experimental results reveals that there is a significant difference in novelty means between the nonfunctional requirement and the no-requirements group, with the nonfunctional groups achieving higher novelty scores. In addition, the novelty means between the mixed requirements and no requirements are also significantly different. Therefore having nonfunctional or mixed requirements can positively affect the novelty of the solutions. In terms of variety, there are significant differences in means between the nonfunctional requirement and functional requirement groups as well as the nonfunctional and no-requirements groups. It leads to an inference that only nonfunctional requirements are necessary to increase the variety of design solutions. These findings lead to new future research questions relating to understanding exactly how functionality, in this case functional requirements, influences an engineer's thinking.