Corporate Design Challenges: Engaging Student Creativity and Problem-Solving

JEFFREY SMITH: Hello. Welcome to my presentation. I'm Professor Jeffrey Smith, and my title of the presentation is Corporate Design Challenges-- Engaging Student Creativity and Problem Solving, and that's the mouthful. That's a lot to take in.

And just a little background. The way that this happened was I run the industrial design of the engineering technology programs at Diablo Valley College. So one of the challenges was to create content that was engaging for the students, that gave them portfolios, that kind of raised the bar so it wasn't just your ordinary class. So the challenge for an instructor and the challenge for me was, how do I, as an instructor, engage students to create thoughtful, well-engineered, and aesthetically pleasing products?

So if you look at this slide, you'll see a multitude of things, a [INAUDIBLE] chair, this is a Lamborghini, Apple Watch, some personal items, my little coffee maker, and then this is a bag, fashion. So all of these are industrial design, design-engineered products. Some of them are timeless, some of them are trendy. So how do you inspire students to create these kind of products and put them in their portfolios?

So essentially, this whole idea of a project-based curriculum is-- what I noticed was after having done them and having not done them, when the students in my class were just working to get a grade, what they would do is feel me out and determine what it was-- what the expectation was for the instructor. And what I found was with the design challenge, the students changed the dynamic of the class. So typically, the students come in, come out, we have a computer lab, a little area to do prototyping, and in the normal environment, the class would be over, and they'd leave. But when we brought in a corporate sponsor, and I'll talk about that a little bit, about the scope of that, we found or what I found was they far exceeded the amount of hours, doubling the amount of time and effort they put in these projects, and the quality of their work [AUDIO OUT]. In many cases, we would have to-- security would have to literally throw them out of the computer labs at night. So that's a good thing.

Now, for the corporation, if you are going to do a project-based, what is the value added for a company? Like, for example, if you're going to approach a company, and they're busy, they're not in education, why would they spend their time and energy, especially a big company? And so, the way this was structured was that these corporations were able to develop design briefs for projects they're working on, or they're exploring new markets. But it's a great way for them to generate ideas or concepts.

The other thing with a design challenge is that, typically, when corporations are looking to hire, they do the resumes. They come to college campuses. They get a booth. And when you have a project like this, the lead engineers are working directly with the students. And they get essentially the cream of the crop of the students. And it's not just a one time interview. They actually work with them through the semester. So, it's a great method for recruiting students for these corporations.

So, this is just an example of some of the companies that I've worked with over the years. Bose, Brita, Mountain Hardware, IDEO, Lamar Italia, Nissan, Z-Line, Toyota Material. And there's a lot more that I've worked with. And so, the way that this was originally structured was I had approached the Autodesk with some of my colleagues in the industrial design community out here in the Bay Area in Northern California. And the cell was, the pitch was, essentially, we will bring in the corporate client. But we asked Autodesk if they would essentially sponsor it, take care of logistics, but we would use the Fusion 360 SOC.

And so, it was a win for Autodesk because they had this group of very talented students from a variety of colleges using the software. It was a win for the students because they were actually doing real type work. And it was a win for the corporation because it was a way to work with the students. And so, students got feedback on the design from-- part of the deal was, when we reached out to these corporations, they had basically three touch points. At the one, they had to do the presentation. We helped them come up-- I would help them come up with a design brief. And then, they would do a presentation to the students. And this was, initially it was done at an Autodesk in San Francisco in one of their rooms. But then, it moved online.

And so, they would present their overview. And then, they would have to work one on one with the students. So, we'd have a mid-term review. And that would be the opportunity for the students to present. And the design team would then give their feedback one on one to the students. And that was very important. And it was really critical part of this. And then, finally, at the end, they would be the judges and present everything.

So, one of the projects we worked on was a company called Limar Italia. And so, Limar Italia is a company in Italy. And let me give you just an overview of the field working with an Italian company. They make bike products. Rather than maybe an Italian, there's more emotion and experience in developing a product like this. So, let's just give a taste of what this is all about here. And this is one of their promotional videos.

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OK, so, that gives a flavor of the brand we are working with. So, I'll tell you what Limar-- essentially, we approached them about designing these helmets. And so, they are a company based in northern Italy. And just to summarize real quick here, they were one of the first companies to go from-- back in the day, they used to have the strapped helmets. And I remember riding on those when I was a kid. And they changed to the helmets with the shells. And that was in the-- I want to say that was-- well, here it is in the late '80s. '86, I think, is when the company was. And they strived to be a compact light in fact.

One of the challenges with a company like Limar, the brand, is they're a small company and they have to compete with big conglomerate companies. And so, design is critical for them. So, essentially, the design brief-- and this is the design brief that they gave the students. The projects they wanted the students to work on was an urban commuter helmet, world's fastest time trial helmet, the lightest racing helmet, and a new market, which is the gravel riding/racing helmet.

So, we ask the corporations to come up with a brief. And so, this is the Urban. And so, this is their research. And typically, companies like this are small. They do their own marketing. And so, they're looking at the e-bike market. And this whole area was booming. We did this about two years ago, right as COVID was happening. And so, people were buying bikes. So, the urban commuting was kind of a new market for them. Looking at eco conscious choice.

But, so, essentially, this is the brief. This is what the students would look at. And there's a lot here. And so, the students could choose between one of four. So, one was the Urban. Second one was the Fastest. This is a time trial helmet. If you look at the bike, typical control if he's in that position. And so, this is really an individual sport where every ounce of the weight of the bike-- it's performance driven. So, there are a lot of-- comfort is not an issue for this. So, this is a different type of a helmet.

And so, considerations. We are also using Autodesk generative design Fusion. So, there's Bluetooth. There's a lot of things. And these are really the suggestions they throw out.

Third one was the Lightest Road Racing helmet. And comfort is a big deal. Think of the Tour de France. This team they sponsor is in the Tour, Limar. You can see the helmet. This is a team that they sponsor. So, weight is a big thing. And it has to ventilate. And so, here it is. Comfort, sweat management.

And the last one, which was kind of fun, was this. It's not mountain biking. It's gravel. And so, talking about that. The design team talked to the students about all this.

And so, essentially what happened was we also decided that it was important for us to have a group together. Now, we had a couple of colleges together, three colleges. And so, we met. This was at Velodrome. This was in San Jose, the Hellyer County Park. And it was a lot of fun. So, for example, we worked with them. And this is the schools and such. But you'll see here, real briefly, we'll get a professional expert to talk to the students.

PROFESSIONAL CYCLIST: Have other priorities to kind of combine and work into there. And that's--

JEFFREY SMITH: And so, you can see here what's happening. It is, he's going over the helmets, the kind of helmets that the racers use, out of track. It adds a level of excitement, of interest and engagement. And it then gives it a little bit more real world. And this is a good place for everybody, because we're on Zoom, to actually come together and look at everything, right? So, we have a professional cyclist here on a track, just really helping frame what we were doing.

All right, so, here is a submission from a student. To me, this looks more like a racing helmet. This was a Commuter. What was interesting about this was, again, if it was just for me, the students typically would not spend this kind of time in the detail. But if you look at this whole concept-- and it's really a problem solving-- was, when you stop-- if you notice this rear, it's kind of like, it'll come on as a red light. So, when you put your brakes on, a bright red light with the circle with a slash through it would appear. And it also had this visor. Beautiful rendering. A lot of work put into this, different materials. But so, this-- students excited about it. Limar Italia is thrilled with it. The company Autodesk, of course, liked to see the product getting used.

Here's another one. This is student, a little bit more traditional presentation with some sketches and some details. His inspiration, if you can tell here, the Falcon was the Falcon. And so, modeling after the Falcon and integrating all the requirements that needed to be required.

Last one is, this had more of the feel of the Italian experience. It had the leather part of the helmet. And we had storyboards through all this. But these are kind of the three submissions. And the interesting about these three submissions, one was a college student who was at the college age. . I think he was probably 22 this one was actually a high school student. And then, the third one, the Falcon, was a gentleman in his late 40s. So, a variety of different people.

Now the thing is, with a project like this, what does an instructor do? I mean, how much do you teach? Because there's a whole notion about project based learning that there's a hands off approach, right? And so, that is not how this is done because I've done projects when I was in college. I went to school up in RIT, great school, great instruction way back in the '90s. And it was more, this is the project. You've got three or four months to complete it. Check in.

This was a little different mentality here. Less hands off. And so, there's kind of two arguments. And so, if you look at what's called the minimally guided, right? And that's really where students are discovering, and problem solving on their own, experiential learning, also constructive learning. It's kind of the minimally guided approach. That's not what is happening here. What people, what research finds, is that when people are-- so, one argument is that people learn best in this unguided environment. You have a project. The sponsor gives it to you. Students just work through their problems. And one of the things that research discovered a long time ago was that this minimally guided is not nearly as effective as guiding students through the process.

And so, what is happening in these design challenges is there is a design process. And so, this whole thing about problem solving is actually kind of a misnomer. So, if you go back and look back at this whole problem solving, really, the beginning of American psychology with Edward Thorndike. And what he found was this whole creativity, people think it's just this naturally given thing that you're God given or genetically given. There may be something to that.

But what he found was that this whole thing of problem solving could be based to trial and error. And he was able to formulate this through his hypothesis, was that he tested cats. And what he found was that they were getting through trial and error. That's how they were solving it. So, he took this methodology into the educational field.

And so, a couple of things that Thorndike came up with was-- his three areas of intellectual development were abstract intelligence, mechanical intelligence, and social intelligence. And I'm going to key on the social intelligence. But mechanical intelligence, that's really where I can teach tutorials and the software. And we can teach that. But, looking at more of the social intelligence.

So, I'm going to loop back to that. I'm going to show you another project we did design challenge. This is with a company called Mountain Hardwear. And so, these slides are all from the company. And so, the two areas were backpacking and a multi-tool. And so, this is what they presented to the students. Now, this was a couple of years ago. This was back in 2015. So, we went to their site, and they presented this to the students. And essentially, what they said was back then it was a $5 billion industry basically split by North Face and Patagonia. And then, there were some outliers, Mountain Hardwear, Columbia, Marmot, and Spyder. And so, looking at the competition.

Now they are located in the factory where Rosie the Riveter was from. And so, they employ-- it's in Richmond, California. It's right across the Bay from San Francisco. And so, we toured the facility. And you have the merchandising design, their team. Product equipment manager, the accessories manager, or the design manager. And they present for the facility. They're basically explaining how they designed these tents.

So this tends to be half fashion designers and half the product designers, their staff. So, what they tell the students is, look, the designed in Richmond, California. The fabric is coming from Vietnam. And all the aluminum-- think of poles and tents-- is all old extruded in Korea. And so, the ratio cost, 1 to 5. They buy materials and tents, sell it at $50.

And so, this is really important for students to understand the way that these industry folks work. So, we're looking at them. They're usually very excited to show the students. Students get very engaged because they're talking to the real head of design of these companies that close apparel that they're already wearing and purposing. So, the first one was a backpack tent. And typically, a design brief like this, there's materials. And then, we also have deliverables. And so, the sketches, research, CAD, which is our Fusion 360, some prototypes.

So, here's the first one. So, this one is essentially 2 and 1/2. And that half is actually the dog. And so, this is a tent. It has to fit into a backpacking, backpacking tent. Second one was a multitool, a little bit more conducive to software like the Fusion 360. And so, really looking at new markets, sports and recreational, camping, climbing, home, crafts, automotive. And trying to discover new areas. And so, this is some of the research.

One of the students was interested in the multitool persona. And so, we have students do surveys. We help them come up with their qualitative questions. And so, here is his presentation, right? So, this is Fusion 360. And this is for a sewing kit. And so, it's got all the tools needed. But what's important to note here is just the amount of detail and time that the student would spend on a course like this and a project like this. So, very engaging for the students and great for their portfolios.

Another one, just kind of a whole different realm, was we do tend to work with fancy classes with machinists. And so, one of the students was looking at a tool for a machinist general purpose forklift. This is more of a traditional multitool. And you can see what he created here. So, this would be for machining.

And there's a lot, lot of more submissions. But these are two of the hottest, all right? So, back to the whole, how do you get students to think about these projects. And I'm going to show you a variety of things here. But one of the things with design and industrial design is this whole idea of emotional intelligence and why that is important because, if you're designing a product or something for a consumer other than yourself, you pretty much have to put yourself in that person's shoes. And you have to have some empathy. You have to consider what is it that they want, what they need. And so, that is less technical, more what we would call qualitative. Or you could give them a couple different ways of doing it, through surveys, observations.

But one of the things about this whole emotional intelligence, it's fascinating to know, is that people always assume it's IQ that makes people get better jobs. But the reality is that 20% is IQ. The rest have to do with 80%, which is the whole emotional intelligence and this very interpersonal intelligence. And there's a lot of great information on that. And Daniel Goleman does a great job explaining some of the characteristics-- self-awareness, hope, empathy, delayed gratification. And so, these are really important for design engineers to understand when they're developing products unless they're doing it for themselves, which is probably a pretty small market if they're designing for elderly, for children, for the opposite sex, or what have you. You have to be able to put yourself in their positions and be empathetic to their needs.

All right, another way of problem solving. There is a great book by Donald Norman. And this is more this theoretical framework of human centered design, understanding people. And so, a lot of that is through observation. He gives a great example where if you look at the teapot here, but looking at the way people, observing people working with products. His whole thing was doors and how people would be used.

More recently, there's this whole thing called design thinking. And it really has come to the forefront where it does encompass empathy, and creativity, and analyzing the problem and the context. And so, that was all done. Design thinking came out of a company called IDEO. And to solve difficult problems and multidimensional problems. And so, we actually worked with IDEO. And IDEO, here is David Kelley adapted into the business. And this, if you look at why product design is at the forefront, is because of, really, IDEO and some of the companies they work. So, it's really to identify known ambiguous and discover hidden things to achieve a goal.

So, one of the most famous things they designed was the first Apple mouse. And but the interesting thing about product design and industrial design, it really is broad, encompassing from consumers, the beverage, retail, computer, medical. Think of architecture but everything but the building. So, everything, your computer, to your desk, to your toothbrush.

So, their challenge that they did with us was to design a launching system for this new-- this was was 2015. But what they were looking at was this. I'll show you the video here. Bear with me real quickly here. And OK.

So, what is this strange thing? It looks like a kite. It's a plane that's flying in circles. And it's attached to this vehicle here. And so, this is what this company IDEO was working with. And what it does, it actually is what's called an energy. And so, it's this device that breaks power, and through the cable it brings energy.

And so, one of the advantages of this wind turbine is, if you think in the ocean where there's high probability of waves and saltwater, where this could fly in a much bigger, create more energy. Google actually ended up buying this company. Not sure what they ended up doing with it. But these are the kind of projects that really can inspire students. So, we were really tasked with the takeoff and landing the mechanism. And I can't because, it's, proprietary go too far into it.

But let's talk about IDEO and this whole thing about design. And so, a lot of people who don't understand industrial design or product design just assume it was Steve Jobs. And he was not a product designer. He had an eye for talent. And one of the things that happened is when he returned, they brought him back. He was that Mint. They needed an operating system, but he had a sense of good design.

And what was happening at the time with Apple is they had these PC, these beige computers that could run. It was kind of a mess. And so, he streamlined it with Johnny Ives. And really, the center of it was this product design. And this really helped turn Apple around.

And so, one of the things is people are still-- highly creative guy, obviously. But there is more to it than just being creative. And so, let's look at some basis. And this is what you can use when you teach students about design engineering. , So Dieter Rams, very famous designer. And if you look at the Apple products that Johnny Ives was coming up with, they're very similar aesthetically to what he was doing with Braun. And here's the Apple, first iPod. If you look at the Braun radio, very similar design scheme to the point where using the same font and the buttons. This is a calculator. It's all digital. It's not really there, but that's the real calculator. Back in '77, 2007.

And so, it's not that he was feeling. That's not what I'm implying. But what it is with this whole Dieter Rams is his design philosophy. He essentially came up with this whole idea of his design principles. And he is known for unobtrusive, less is better, timelessness, and really influenced what came out of Apple. And so, he has 10 principles, right? One, . Innovative The product has to be useful. And you can mull this over. It has to be aesthetic, but it's not fashion. And so, it has to be understandable. It really expresses its function, self explanatory.

And I could spend a lot of time, and I do, explaining each one of these. I actually have students, when they do this, they will give me one that does and one that doesn't.

It could be unobtrusive, right? It's a cool-- it's not decoration or a work of art. Nothing against art. But it's unobtrusive. It's not screaming for your attention. It's honest, right? So, think of these cars that have wings where the car is really only ever doing 60 miles an hour, but it's all the little air scoops and all that. Or the Jeep that can't actually go off into the-- or the pickup truck that can't go into the dirt even though it looks just like it. That's not being honest. You're not manipulating your consumer.

It's long lasting. It's not fashionable. It's thought down to the last detail. Think of every screw on your phone, every fold, every speaker, that there's nothing that's arbitrary. Everything is thought to the last detail. It's environmentally friendly. And as little design as possible. That, for a designer a design engineer, might be hard. But you have to remember this was created in the 1950s, all right.

So, here's another project we work with. And so, in each one of these design challenges, as the instructor, you're not just cutting them loose. You're teaching design principles and different ways to work with, observe your customer.

So, this is a portable kayak. They are famous. They're on Shark Tank. If you look up, go to Google and type in Shark Tank. And essentially, what they came up with, this is the patent here. It's a fascinating story. Aaron, the-- Anton, excuse me, the CEO, he's an architect. And his whole thing was from-- if you watch the video, you can get a little bit sense. But the whole idea was these kayaks are traditionally very large in the Bay Area. You can't really-- you can't take them on a train. You put them on the roof of the car. But this would actually-- using this origami scheme, you can fit it into essentially a little briefcase that folds up.

And so, for the students, this was the project they were to design. So, this is what they provided, portable kayak for the students. And this was actually at the Autodesk in San Francisco, that presentation. So, transforming the way that people connect with the outdoors, looking at this opportunity. And this is the marketing. If you're a big firm, you might hire a marketing firm to do this for you. If you're a small firm, they typically do this in house. And so, 80% of-- 81% of Americans are near big cities, want to connect to nature. So, this is what the students used to guide their design brief. By the way, they did very well with COVID, finally. COVID happened. Their sales took off.

So, the whole inspiration was origami. And so, they essentially showing the students what the competition is. So, there's rigid, inflatable, skin on frame, and this folding new product. And so, looking at their consumer profiles. And this was very helpful for the students because they would go to the sites. And they would look at what the consumers were saying. And it was very beneficial to a lot of the students. So, looking at their market, they have these five Beach, Bay, Haven, Coast, Inlet. And then, they kind of show what the bikes look like. This is what's presented to the students. And then, really looking at the history of where the kayak came from with the Inuits, millennial old.

And so, understanding the history of the product and then some of the accessories that they're selling. And so, the students were tasked with creating accessories. And you see flotation bags and dry bags, packs, paddles, and such. So, color schemes. And so, we offered prizes in this one. And again, you had to use the Fusion software. And I think this was the, see here with generative design, which is a little challenging for the students.

And so, this is their presentation. And this is actually one of the student submissions. So, this was Nicholas. We were very lucky to have Nicholas from Berlin. I thought this was Photoshopped. But this is all with-- I want to say it's Fusion 360 with-- you can actually look at the flaps. 3S Max was where he generated all those brainstorms with the Autodesk products.

This is all rendered beautiful. And his whole concept was this accessory for a phone that you just clip onto it. This is what we would call an exploded view.

And so, we had-- typically with this, we've got three colleges. Each college has like 20 students. So, you're looking at a lot of different submissions.

This was one of my favorite. This was another submission. I think Eric here. Eric, interesting student. Eric worked at Lucasfilm's and wanted to do industrial design. And so, for student like that, he doesn't want to transfer. He just needs good portfolio and experience working with industry. So, these kind of projects are really great. His whole thing was this cricoid suction mount, this new technology. Being able to-- if you look on the right here-- actually put a motor on one of their products. So, the kayak. This actually is the one that won the grand prize.

And so, he goes through the design process with drawings and models and looking at materials. And then, this is his Fusion 360 model. And so, another use of it, which you could put your camera on there and multi-use. , And so looking, having the students really go through it, looking at the hardware. And he's got this great little device.

And here's another submission. This was one of my favorite. Elena did this. And her whole thing was based on the Blowfish. And this was where if you would have an accident or flip over, a kit for a child. Adults could use this, too. But it would be inflatable. It was based off this Blowfish. , And so these are all Fusion models here that she created with kind of a cutaway. It's a kind of flotation device off a CO2 cartridge and then another rendering that she created with the Autodesk products.

All right, so, going back to this. Now, I did say that we do have some high school students. But what a lot of research will say-- and this is from the National Council of Teachers in Mathematics-- was that you need to be able to integrate, even in math, ideas and connect them to solve problems. And so, these design challenges provide the opportunity for students to solve problems, forcing them to go beyond what they might normally be doing. And so, the instructor-- so I note, it is kind of fun because I'm not doing the same thing every semester. I do a lot of fun. So, high school students, same thing. So, this is ConnectEd. They are a research facility. They're located in Berkeley, California.

I know when I was in high school, I had a great education. My trade class, though, I never knew what it was about until, I think it was about 30 years later when I was on a different design project at the Muir House. They were redoing all the-- what they're doing at the Muir home on Muir's House is making it back to the original home, and looking at the angles and the slope, and making that connection. And I really wish I had had a real world connection. I've used trig now in all lots of other things. But it took me a long time to really understand why I had to memorize all that. And so, connected to the real world projects like this can really help the student be engaged and work hard. And for high school, hoping that they're going to, obviously, graduate and do better.

So, the reality is that we-- in the US, this comes from the American College Testing, ACT, is that we don't produce enough STEM, science, technology, engineering, math students. We don't have enough qualified instructors. , So being able to integrate your curriculum with industry is a win-win for everybody. All right? So there's a big labor shortage. This is actually new. This is from their latest data showing that we've lost a lot of qualified people. And so, one way to engage them is to create these products.

Last one I'll show here is a recent one. Was our working with Toyota Industries. I did not know that Toyota has three branches. Your automotive, everybody knows that. They also make machinery for factories, for clothes. And then, they are one if not the largest forklift producer.

And so, looking at working with Toyota Industries, this is their presentation to the students. And so, they're looking at, in this, what kind of design enhancements could benefit the novice, the expert, the Gen Z, and our aging operator. That's what they're struggling with. And so, this is a great opportunity for them to work with very bright students and get their perspective on it.

So, looking. This is what they're showing now. Everything's become electrified. It used to be-- I think it was, as they said, the gas was in the inside and the outdoor was typically motor diesel or something like that. Now it's all becoming electrified. And so, what talent, what opportunities are developing? And this is for the students to work through.

The other thing they were looking at is this whole human interface. And especially with the Gen Z, as they say, or the gamers, the much higher level comfort using joysticks than maybe one of their baby boomers. And so, looking at how can you improve that. And so, that was one of the other areas.

What can you do to these forklift operators? Especially what we learned-- we actually went to one of their distributors-- is that these operators will be on here 10, 12 hours a day. The way that they make money is these corporations are utilizing these forklifts. They're using 12, 14 hours a day. Unlike a car, as they told us, gets maybe used 2, 3 hours a day, these forklifts are used for 12 hours a day on average.

So, looking at different environments. And so, this is really, for the students, a way to-- automated, remote control. What is the future?

And then, this one seemed really kind of hokey to me until we got into it. So, the question was how does a forklift operate on the move. And so, I thought this was one of these-- sometimes the design directors want to do something that seems really out there to discount engaging. But turns out we are going to the moon. And there are fuel cells and things that have to be moved. And so, how do you do that in 0 gravity? And so, there is a lot of problems that have to be figured out. Zero gravity. Think of a forklift. Obviously, a forklift that we're seeing would just float away. So, there are things that have to happen. Zero gravity or limited. Not zero gravity, limited gravity but no oxygen. And so, very engaging for the students.

So, here is one submission. And so, you can see here this was an automated. This was not. This was for your traditional factory. But it was split in half.

And another one. This was this whole concept of comfort. And there's actually a ball on this. And there was-- each presentation has about a dozen slides or so. But you can see he's working with engineering on [INAUDIBLE]. So, for example, there's the chair. And the next one is-- you can see all done on Fusion 360 and then modeled into photography. You can see it swivel there off that ball.

And then, this last one was the Bowler. So, you see a lot of drawings. The software is great. But we always tell our students start with all the ideas. Start in your head. And then, put it on a piece of paper. And then, take it to the computer. That's kind of the process that we use. But it's really important that you get on to that computer because if you never get onto the pad model, 3D model, it's very easy to kind of cheat in a drawing and not really solve the functionality of it. And so, here are his concepts. And this is all Fusion 360 and different products here.

And so, that is the corporate design challenge and how you engage students in creativity and problem solving. Thank you for your time. And great, thanks.