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1. Stakeholder Engagement With Prototypes During Front-End Medical Device Design: Who Is Engaged With What Prototype?

   https://doi.org/10.1115/DMD2020-9020  

   Coulentianos, Marianna J.; Rodriguez-Calero, Ilka; Daly, Shanna R.; Sienko, Kathleen H. (January 2020, 2020 Design of Medical Devices Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   Abstract Stakeholder engagement with prototypes during the front-end phases of medical device design can support problem identification, problem definition, and early concept generation. This study examined what prototypes were leveraged to engage specific types of stakeholders during front-end medical device design. Analysis of semi-structured interviews with 22 design practitioners in the medical device industry revealed some common associations of prototype choice for particular stakeholders. A few associations are highlighted: designers engaged users with physical three-dimensional (3D) prototypes, financial decision-makers with physical 3D and two-dimensional (2D) prototypes, government and regulatory stakeholders with 2D prototypes, and expert advisors with digital 3D prototypes. The rationale provided by practitioners revealed the intentional selection of prototype form for specific stakeholder engagements. 

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2. Understanding Multi-Sector Stakeholder Value Dynamics in Hurricane Michael to Facilitate Collaborative Decision Making in Disaster Contexts

   https://doi.org/10.1061/9780784482858.028  

   Pathak, Aishwarya; Zhang, Lu; Ganapati, Nazife Emel (November 2020, Construction Research Congress 2020)

   Despite the broader acknowledgement of shared responsibilities in emergency management, one of the hidden and overlooked issues in disaster literature is the integration of multi-sector stakeholder values: the things that are of importance to the stakeholders (e.g., safety, profit, electability). Stakeholders (e.g., different levels of government, the private sector, the non-profit sector, and the communities) hold numerous values with varying degrees of importance, forming a system of value priorities. Stakeholder values and value priorities—referred to as value systems—are not static in a disaster context; they are dynamic, time-sensitive, and event-driven. A more in-depth understanding of the dynamics of stakeholder value systems is surely needed to allow policy-makers to introduce more pro-active and timely measures towards more resilient communities. To address this need, this paper focuses on identifying and understanding the stakeholder values in the context of Hurricane Michael. Semi-structured interviews (n=24 with 30 interviewees) were conducted to understand what public and private stakeholders value in different phases of Hurricane Michael. Based on the interview results, ten stakeholder values were identified: safety, resource efficiency, natural resource preservation, culture preservation, community growth, community adaptability, community cohesion, social welfare improvement, personal achievement, and business development. This study advances the knowledge in the area of disasters by empirically investigating public and private stakeholder values across different phases of the disaster. Such knowledge will help practitioners implement disaster resilience strategies in a way that accounts for diverse stakeholder needs and priorities, thus facilitating human-centered decision making towards building more resilient communities. 

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3. Understanding the Roles of Low-fidelity Prototypes in Engineering Design Activity

   Ali, Hadi; Lande, Micah (June 2019, ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   Practical ingenuity is demonstrated in engineering design through many ways. Students and practitioners alike create many iterations of prototypes in solving problems and design challenges. While focus is on the end product and/or the process employed along the way, this study combines these interests to better understand the product and process through the roles of initial prototyping through the creation of such things as alpha prototypes, conceptual mock-ups, and other rapid prototypes. We explore the purposes and affordances of these low-fidelity prototypes in engineering design activity through both synthesis of different perspectives from literature to compose an integrated framework to characterize prototypes that are developed as part of ideation in designing, as well as historic and student examples and case studies. Studying prototyping (activity) and prototypes (artifacts) is a way to studying design thinking and how students and practitioners learn and apply a problem solving process to their work. Prototyping can make readily evident and explicit (through act of creating and the creations themselves) some of the thinking and insights of the engineering designer into the design problem. Initial, low-fidelity prototypes are characterized as prototypes that are not always elaborate depictions containing all the fine details of the design. In fact, features in a prototype do not always appear in the final design. The underpinning of this work is that prototyping, as a process, is an act of externalizing design thinking, embodying it through physical objects. While several prescriptive frameworks have been developed to describe what prototypes prototype and the role of prototype, the role of low-fidelity prototypes, specifically, lacks sufficient attention. We will present prototyping rather as an holistic mindset that can be a means to approach problem solving in a more accessible manner. It can be helpful to apply this sort of mindset approach from these initial problem understanding through functional decomposition to quickly communicate and learn by trial and building in learning loops to oneself, with an engineering design team, and to potential stakeholders outside the team. 

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4. Thinking Beyond the Device: An Overview of Human- and Equity-Centered Approaches for Health Technology Design

   https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-bioeng-081922-024834  

   Rodriguez, Natalia M.; Burleson, Grace; Linnes, Jacqueline C.; Sienko, Kathleen H. (June 2023, Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering)

   A shift in the traditional technocentric view of medical device design to a human-centered one is needed to bridge existing translational gaps and improve health equity. To ensure the successful and equitable adoption of health technology innovations, engineers must think beyond the device and the direct end user and must seek a more holistic understanding of broader stakeholder needs and the intended context of use early in a design process. The objectives of this review article are ( a) to provide rationale for the need to incorporate meaningful stakeholder analysis and contextual investigation in health technology development and biomedical engineering pedagogy, ( b) to review existing frameworks and human- and equity-centered approaches to stakeholder engagement and contextual investigation for improved adoption of innovative technologies, and ( c) to present case studyexamples of medical device design that apply these approaches to bridge the gaps between biomedical engineers and the contexts for which they are designing. 

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5. Assessing the impacts of stakeholder involvement in long‐term agricultural experiments via a case study in the upper US Midwest

   https://doi.org/10.1002/jeq2.20676  

   Guo, Tian; Marquart‐Pyatt, Sandra; Ulbrich, Tayler; Doll, Julie E; Wilke, Brook; Robertson, G Philip (January 2025, Journal of Environmental Quality)

   Abstract Agricultural researchers are increasingly encouraged to engage with stakeholders to improve the usefulness of their projects, but iterative research on the design and assessment of stakeholder engagement is scarce. The USDA Long‐Term Agroecosystem Research (LTAR) Network recognizes the importance of effective engagement in increasing the utility of information and technologies for future agriculture. Diverse stakeholders and researchers at the Kellogg Biological Station (KBS) LTAR site co‐designed the KBS LTAR Aspirational Cropping System Experiment, a process that provides a testing ground and interdisciplinary collaborations to develop theory‐driven assessment protocols for continuous stakeholder engagement. Informed by prior work, we designed an assessment protocol that aims to measure participant preferences, experiences, and perceived benefits at various stages of this long‐term project. Two online surveys were conducted in 2021 and 2022 among participants of LTAR engagement events at KBS, using a pre‐post design, resulting in 125 total responses. Survey respondents had positive perceptions of the collaboratively designed research experiment. They had a strong expectation that the research would generate conservation and environmental advances while also informing policy and programs. Respondents also indicated a desire to network with other stakeholders. The research team noted the significant role of a long‐term stakeholder engagement specialist in inviting participants from diverse backgrounds and creating an open and engaging experience. Overall, results highlight an interdisciplinary path of intentional and iterative engagement and evaluation to build a program that is adaptive and responsive to stakeholder needs. 

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