Master Thesis Defense - March 23, 2017: Investigation into Neurological Foundation of Synthesis and Evaluation Activities in Conceptual Design

Lixin Liu

Thursday, March 23, 2017 at 2:00 p.m.
Room EV001.162

You are invited to attend the following M.A.Sc. (Quality Systems Engineering) thesis examination.

Examining Committee

Dr. A. Mohammadi, Chair
Dr. Y. Zeng, Supervisor
Dr. A. Mohammadi, CIISE Examiner
Dr. H. Ge, External Examiner (BCEE)

Abstract

The objective of this thesis is to use principal component analysis (PCA) to explore the relationship between neurological brain power and activities in conceptual design. This thesis provides an objective method to measure and understand designer’s activities per brain signal patterns. Understanding designer’s activities may help us develop powerful tools to improve designer’s performance. This thesis is based on the cognitive experiments consisting of 6 design tasks conducted at the Concordia Design Lab (Nguyen & Zeng, 2016).

First, we observed the electroencephalogram (EEG) data of closed eyes rest states and design activities (synthesis and evaluation) using statistical methods. We found that the 7 bands of subjects’ EEG power are normally distributed. Then we averaged the 32 subjects’ relative EEG band power, we found that alpha band power negatively correlated to the other band powers.

Second, we apply PCA to the data. We found that there are three principal components (PCs) that account for most of the variance (97%) of the EEG band power. Per the results of 3 PCs, we found that the rest segments are significantly different from the design activity segments, synthesis segments have greater variance than evaluating solution segments, and they are not significantly related. From the results of 3PCs, we may observe the EEG data as the baseline of design activities.

Third, by comparing the differences of the subjects on the PCs, we might infer or evaluate the subject’s design behavior. By optimizing the model, ultimately it may help us improve the performance of design.