More Like this

1. Medical Device Design Practitioner Strategies for Prototype-Centered Front-End Design Stakeholder Engagements in Low-Resource Settings

   https://doi.org/10.1017/dsi.2019.101  

   Coulentianos, Marianna J.; Rodriguez-Calero, Ilka; Daly, Shanna R.; Burridge, Jocelyn; Sienko, Kathleen H. (July 2019, Proceedings of the Design Society: International Conference on Engineering Design)

   Abstract Prototypes have the potential to provoke discussion and to encourage stakeholders to play an active role during design engagements in the front-end phases of a design process. However, detailed descriptions of stakeholder engagement strategies in front-end design are lacking. The aim of this research study was to understand how design practitioners prepare and manage stakeholders for engagements involving prototypes in the front-end phases of a medical device design process. Design practitioners at companies developing mechanical and electromechanical medical devices for use in low- and middle-income countries were interviewed following a semi-structured interview guide. Interview transcripts were analysed, and inductive codes were developed. The findings suggest that design practitioners manage the group composition of stakeholders, review the project and prototype(s) with stakeholders at the start of the engagement, and show the progress of prototypes to stakeholders over multiple engagements. These strategies shed light on the importance of handling interpersonal relationships during stakeholder engagement with prototypes. 

   more » « less
2. 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. 

   more » « less
3. ImpersonatAR: Using Embodied Authoring and Evaluation to Prototype Multi-Scenario Use Cases for Augmented Reality Applications

   https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4063558  

   Wu, Meng-Han; Ipsita, Ananya; Huang, Gaoping; Ramani, Karthik; Quinn, Alex (March 2024, Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering)

   Abstract Prototyping use cases for augmented reality (AR) applications can be beneficial to elicit the functional requirements of the features early-on, to drive the subsequent development in a goal-oriented manner. Doing so would require designers to identify the goal-oriented interactions and map the associations between those interactions in a spatio-temporal context. Pertaining to the multiple scenarios that may result from the mapping, and the embodied nature of the interaction components, recent AR prototyping methods lack the support to adequately capture and communicate the intent of designers and stakeholders during this process. We present ImpersonatAR, a mobile-device-based prototyping tool that utilizes embodied demonstrations in the augmented environment to support prototyping and evaluation of multi-scenario AR use cases. The approach uses: (1) capturing events or steps in the form of embodied demonstrations using avatars and 3D animations, (2) organizing events and steps to compose multi-scenario experience, and finally (3) allowing stakeholders to explore the scenarios through interactive role-play with the prototypes. We conducted a user study with ten participants to prototype use cases using ImpersonatAR from two different AR application features. Results validated that ImpersonatAR promotes exploration and evaluation of diverse design possibilities of multi-scenario AR use cases through embodied representations of the different scenarios. 

   more » « less
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. 

   more » « less
5. Perceptions, Experiences, and Priorities Supporting Agroecosystem Management Decisions Differ among Agricultural Producers, Consultants, and Researchers

   https://doi.org/10.3390/su10114096  

   McKenzie, Sean; Parkinson, Hilary; Mangold, Jane; Burrows, Mary; Ahmed, Selena; Menalled, Fabian (November 2018, Sustainability)

   The sustainability of agriculture depends as much on the natural resources required for production as it does on the stakeholders that manage those resources. It is thus essential to understand the variables that influence the decision-making process of agricultural stakeholders to design educational programs, interventions, and policies geared towards their specific needs, a required step to enhance agricultural sustainability. This study employed a survey of multiple-choice and open-ended questions to examine the perceptions, experiences, and priorities that influence management decisions of agricultural stakeholders across Montana, United States. A total of 272 respondents completed a survey, representing five distinct agricultural stakeholder groups: 103 (34.9%) conventional producers, 78 (28.7%) consultants, 37 (13.6%) researchers, 33 (12.1%) organic grain producers, and 21 (7.7%) organic vegetable producers. The results revealed that, while stakeholder groups have distinct perceptions, experiences, and priorities, there were similarities across groups (pseudo-F = 22.92, p = 0.001). Specifically, organic vegetable and organic small-grain producers showed similar responses that were, in turn, divergent from those of conventional producers, researchers, and crop consultants. Conventional small-grain producers and researchers showed overlapping response patterns, while crop consultants formed an isolated group. Six clusters resulting from the classification of the multiple-choice response dataset associated with specific agricultural professions (χ2 = 549.72, p = 0.001). The classification of open-ended questions that assessed agronomic challenges and research needs resulted in six distinctive clusters, with specific associations between clusters and agricultural stakeholder groups (χ2 = 164.41, p = 0.001). These results reinforce the need for agricultural education and programs that address unique and shared experiences, priorities, and concerns of multiple stakeholder groups. This study endorses the call for a paradigm shift from the traditional top-down agricultural extension model to one that accounts for participants’ socio-ecological contexts to facilitate the adoption of sustainable agricultural systems that support environmental and human wellbeing. 

   more » « less