Effectiveness of different requirements checklists for novice designers

Working under constrained conditions can boost or kill creativity, depending on the nature of constraints (organizational, personal task-related). However, a design process without clearly identified constraints, which set project objectives, could lead to inefficiencies and unfruitful iterations. Some most acknowledged procedures support requirement definition are focused use specific checklists. notwithstanding importance task, little attention was dedicated verification effectiveness these tools. In such context, paper presents an investigation aimed at assessing performance three checklists that exploit different strategies elicit requirements. To purpose, sample fifty engineering students asked define requirements for case. The outcomes experiment were assessed according well-acknowledged metrics, i.e. quantity, operationality, validity, non-redundancy, completeness. result assessment highlights based more general questions abstract stimuli better novice designers in making explicit internally felt potentially innovative design.