DEALING WITH LOSS: HOW DO DESIGNERS' RESILIENCE AND PERCEPTIONS OF SCARCITY AFFECT PERCEPTIONS OF DESIGN PERFORMANCE?

Resources are an essential aspect of individual problem solving and their availability is critical for success. Resource scarcity is common in many industries and can affect the resources available to prototype, design creatively, and work freely. We argue that designers face scarcity and short timelines on engineering teams, and it is uncertain how these constraints may affect design outcomes and strategies. We also argue that designers must be resilient to overcome challenges faced during problem-solving. In this work, we study the interactions between resilience and perceived resource scarcity and how they affect perceptions of design performance. A controlled study was conducted to understand the linkages between resource scarcity, resilience, and scarcity mindset. We found that a perceived general scarcity of time in day-to-day life significantly predicted perceptions of design performance. Further, we found that participants with higher resilience scores were less likely to have their design idea affected by the induced resource scarcity. Our work builds foundational knowledge regarding the interactions between individual resilience, general perceptions of scarcity, and resource constraints in the context of engineering design. Further work may require more longitudinal-based studies to better understand resilience and resource scarcity over longer periods of time.