Bringing Participatory Techniques to Industrial Design Engineers

2007

There is a growing need for designers with research skills and designers that are able to design for the user experience, next to or instead of technical issues. Over the past five years we have developed so-called 'contextmapping' techniques to inform and inspire design teams about the experiences of the prospective users of the products the team designs. In this paper we present the key elements of this teaching programme, and explain how we divided the elements over different courses in the Industrial Design Engineering curriculum in our university.

The Industrial Design Fundamentals course at Carnegie Mellon helps non-majors to build a broader view of design through hands-on engaging experiences. This sixteen-week open elective offered through the School of Design is a sought after course that consist primarily of undergraduate students from a wide range of disciplines including; engineering, business, humanities & social sciences, human computer interaction, and psychology. Its value has been its ability to weave design thinking, exploration, and problem solving into human centered projects in a condensed timeframe. This course seeks to demystify the product design process through discussions and lectures by introducing new skills, and engaging students in critical thinking and hands on experiences. Three interwoven goals support a holistic approach: Visual thinking — through tools and strategies developed by the author, students are taught the value of sketching, low-fidelity modeling, and imaging (photography, collages, etc.) as key tools for seeing, understanding, exploring, and representing complex information. This knowledge allows them to effectively and efficiently mediate between their minds eye and those of an audience. Human-centered design — each project introduces a different user (self, general, and target) to direct goals and opportunities. Exploration— strategies are shared for generating multiple ideas that shape complex information and lead to new discovery and ultimately a well-reasoned proposal. By the conclusion of the course students have gained an understanding of design as a process of discovery through collaborative and often complex multidisciplinary processes and see stronger connections to their field of study. Further, many share their course experiences with friends and peers, which has contributed to making design more visible and valuable within the university. Such advocacy has strengthened already established ties between engineering and design by spurring new conversations about collaborative efforts and planted the seeds for others. The goal of this paper is to share the structure that has made the course successful and generate discussion that allows it to grow and others to adapt usable methodologies.

2000 Annual Conference Proceedings

Experiential learning can be simply described as learning through doing. It is a process through which individuals construct knowledge, acquire skills and enhance values from direct experience. Traditional engineering education has included experiential components through laboratory assignments often linked with a course. Students would read the lab handout, perform the procedures, and then write a brief lab report describing the results which is then graded and returned. Principles of experiential learning suggest a more active approach that is better suited to design education. Throughout the experiential learning process, learners are actively engaged in posing questions, investigating, experimenting, being curious, solving problems, assuming responsibility, being creative and constructing meaning. A design report tends to focus on the final designed artifact and its satisfaction of the design specifications. It does not often reflect the learning from the experience of designing. Meaningful learning occurs through reflection and resolution of cognitive conflict. This paper describes techniques for processing the design experience; that is, guiding the students through meaningful reflection. The result is that students gain more than just the experience of completing a design, but an enrichment and realization of the methods and skills developed.

Design has evolved to become an important strategic tool in business planning and development. Leaders who seek innovation have embraced design methods, including user research, visualization, and development of alternative futures, to inspire innovation. In education it has become equally important to stimulate innovative thinking through integrated interdisciplinary experiences. Industrial Design Fundamentals (IDF), a non-major course offered through the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon, offers a successful model that addresses these goals. IDF helps non-majors to build a broader view of design through hands-on and engaging experiences. The course consist primarily of undergraduate students from a wide range of disciplines including; engineering, business, humanities & social sciences, human computer interaction, and psychology. It seeks to demystify the product design process and involve students in critical thinking and concept generation. Three interwoven goals support a holistic approach: • Visual thinking — through tools and strategies developed by the author, students are taught the value of manual sketching, low-fidelity modeling, and imaging User centered design — each project introduces a different user (self, general, and target) to understand, direct goals, and expose opportunities. • Exploration— strategies are shared for generating multiple ideas that shape complex information and lead to new discovery and innovative thinking. To evolve knowledge and shape experiences, this course is structured around three progressive projects that explore small to large-scale products and systems. Underlying themes challenge students to give significant consideration to how humans interact with physical information (usability/human factors), understand specific needs (usefulness), and product appeal (desirability). By the conclusion of the course, students gain insight into design. They begin to see how design connects within their field of study and the world. Many evolve to become advocates by sharing their course experiences with friends and peers. This exposure has contributed to making design more visible and valuable within the university community – increasing the attraction to design courses, strengthening already established partnerships, and generating new conversations on collaboration. Finally, these diverse students are entering their professions sensitized to design and design issues and may become future strategic partners through continued advocacy.

LearnxDesign 2021: Engaging with challenges in design education, 2021

This exploratory case study aims to shed light on how end users were considered in students' design processes and final design products. A three-month participatory design project for students (ages 14-15) was created with the following brief: "co-design and make an e-textile product for kindergarteners according to their wishes and needs". We analysed 72 transcribed end-users-related design episodes and the final products from two student teams. The findings indicate that students' end-users-related design discussions concerned various functional, technical, and visual/aesthetic features, as well as aspects beyond functional, such as students' memories and experiences. Additionally, many concrete and abstract features and solutions of the final products were traced back to end users. This study suggests new possibilities for engaging students in empathic and reflective (digital) design and making, targeting design-literate citizens in the 21st century.

Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Engineering and Production Design Education, 2017, 2017

This paper presents work undertaken by 2nd year BSc Product Design students on a live industrial project with McGee (a construction company) and outlines the success, academic benefits, merits and future work undertaken as a result. The project was initiated by the McGee Group who initially approached the Product Design department at NTU. The collaboration was planned 6 months in advance, with a number of presentations, demonstrations and a site visit. Initially introductory presentations from both McGee and the Metropolitan Police were given in relation to cyclist safety around construction vehicles in London. Following this a demonstration of the vehicle in question was combined with an ‘Exchanging Places’ cycle event at the university. Two weeks into the project students were then taken on a site visit and briefing to enhance their understanding of the situation. McGee offered a cash prize for the winning team as an incentive and the project was run over a 5 week period as a group based design project in a studio environment and was additionally supported in the students applied technology classes. At the end of the project students’ presented their work to representatives from McGee and the Metropolitan Police and the students’ work was subsequently displayed and exhibited in the McGee headquarters before a decision on the winning teams was announced. McGee representatives were very impressive with the student’s efforts and outcomes and have since filed a patent jointly between the company and students for the winning solution. This solution is now being developed into a production-ready product by a final year student in collaboration with McGee. This innovative collaborative project resulted in McGee and Nottingham Trent University being shortlisted for and receiving two high commended awards at an industry safety award ceremony as well as a number of press releases in the local and trade media. However, the notable impact was the marked improvement in the students’ motivation and attainment on this particular project, which will be explored in detail. Original publication in the Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Engineering and Production Design Education, 2017”, published by the IED and Design Society, 2017, ISBN 978-1-904670-84-1

The new generation of innovative technologies, such as ubiquitous computing, personal informatics, tangible interaction and Internet-based systems, blurs the boundaries between objects and services. Purdue University's interaction design program is its latest addition to the Industrial Design area within Department of Art & Design. The goal is to arm students with knowledge and tools to prepare for the integration of physical interaction and digital interaction. This paper focuses on introducing several education approaches to fit user experience research into the context of industrial design, which lead to several new interaction design courses. We also discuss the experience we gained from teaching along with potential improvement. Different from traditional Human-computer interaction courses in the computer science, we try to weave real-world projects into the courses, study related cognitive and social systems to inform knowledge, employ research methodologies to evaluate an...

The rate of technological change is accelerating much more quickly than society is able to assimilate. In recent times we seem to have fallen prey to the notion of technology for technology sake… it's new, it's faster, it's smaller… it must be better. This is particularly true as we move into a new age of networked wireless computing. The world is changing. This new technological era offers an unprecedented opportunity to reconcile the relationship between people and technology – an opportunity to focus on human experience as a central issue in the design process. All of us in the design world recognize the problem – and we realize change is needed. This shift from industrial design to "experience design" is having a profound effect on the way we work. But to date we have had limited success in addressing these issues. So what needs to be done and how should we go about it? The aim of this paper is three-fold -first, to establish the need to focus on human expe...

TOJDE, 2019

Today, industrial design education is faced with a new group of students who have met daily life technologies from a very early age. The transformations in educational environments are becoming more and more important for project-based and student-centered design education model. Understanding the needs and expectations of the changing student profile has become essential for design education, which puts new and original outputs as the main objective. Students' expectations of having a say in their own learning environments also provide an important opportunity for them to play an active role in the focus of this change. The aim of this study is to determine the design criteria of a new learning tool in line with the needs and expectations of the new generation industrial design students with a student-oriented approach. Participatory Design workshops were organized to expose expectations of the current learners about a new Design Brief in a digital and online medium. In this qualitative study conducted with participatory design method, gamification elements were used to increase students' motivation, interest, and participation. Design criteria for a new generation design brief have been introduced with participatory design method. All suggestions were found to indicate a more interactive structure depending on the variable and cyclical structure of the design.