Erin MacDonald, a 2011-2012 Big 12 Faculty Fellow, recently returned from the University of Texas at Austin
with a new partnership and several budding research ideas to improve new product design.
MacDonald, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, spent two weeks in May, working side-by-side with assistant professor Carolyn Conner Seepersad from the UT mechanical engineering department as part of the fellowship program.
“We discussed new approaches for the early stages of design and product conceptualization that can address the three pillars of sustainability− environmental, economical, and social,” said MacDonald. “As a result of our discussions, we came up with a new research area that will result in at least one grant proposal and publication in the near future, with more to come.”
The Big 12 Faculty Fellowship Program is a collaborative effort between all the universities that form the Big 12 Athletic Conference. The program provides selected faculty members an opportunity to spend time at member universities, learning from and exchanging ideas with researchers in their field.
MacDonald, one of two Iowa State faculty members who received the grant this year, was pleased to work with Seepersad, the 2010 recipient of the University of Texas System Regents’ Award for Outstanding Teaching and an award winner for her design techniques. MacDonald and Seepersad will be implementing a new approach to artificially introduce diversity, and thereby alternative ideas, into a design team. They plan to write a grant proposal based on the idea this summer.
In addition, MacDonald and Seepersad began compiling a literature review concerning the use of priming in design. Priming, a psychological process in which the use of simple stimuli allows a person to be put in a certain state of mind, can improve the results of brainstorming sessions and other early-stage design exercises, according to MacDonald. Over the next year, the two will publish their findings.
“This experience was extremely beneficial,” said MacDonald. “The face-to-face discussions and mind-mapping were very productive. I do not think we could have thought these research directions over e-mail or talking on the phone. It took two full weeks of this type of interaction to craft the idea.”