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Engineering designers are tasked with complex problems necessitating the use and development of various supports for navigating complexity. Prescriptive design process models are one such tool. However, little research has explored how engineering designers perceive these models' recommendations for engagement in design work. In this exploratory study, we analyzed data from individual semi-structured interviews with 18 mechanical engineering students to identify participant perceptions of design process models. As many design process model visualizations lack explicit attention to some social and contextual dimensions, we sought to compare perceptions among two models drawn from engineering texts and one model that was developed with the intent to emphasize social and contextual dimensions. We identified perceptions of the recommendations from the design process models related to starting and moving through a design process, gathering information, prototyping, evaluating or testing, and what they should consider. Participant perceptions across the three process models suggest different design process models make perceptions of certain recommendations more salient than others. However, participant perceptions also varied for the same process model. We suggest several implications for design education and training based on participant perceptions of the process models, particularly the importance of leveraging multiple design process models. The comprehensive descriptions of participant perceptions provide a foundation for further investigations bridging designers' perceptions to intent, behavior, and, ultimately, design outcomes.
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Investigating a Socially Engaged Design Process Model
Educators can leverage a variety of process models to scaffold students from beginning designer practices to practices aligned with more experienced designers. The Center for Socially Engaged Design at the University of Michigan developed a Socially Engaged Design (SED) Process Model to explicitly emphasize important aspects of design that are often underemphasized or not included in commonly-used design process model visualizations, including, for example, designers embracing the limitations of their own perspective and acknowledging the power they hold, the benefits of integrating contextual considerations, and the use of prototypes throughout a design process rather than as single phase in a design process. To better understand the role of design process models, broadly, and the perceived value of process models that emphasize the importance of people and context in design work, specifically, we investigated upper-level mechanical engineering students' perceptions of this SED Process Model’s visualization. Our findings from this initial exploratory study showed both variability and several consistent themes in participants’ perceptions, for example, there were several interpretations of relationships between different aspects of the model, iteration in design was salient to all participants, and while this SED Process Model’s visualization does have recommendations, several participants noted it does not specify exactly how to achieve those recommendations. Understanding engineering students’ perceptions of this SED Process Model’s visualization can help us (1) iterate on the process model’s visualization and (2) better understand how to leverage multiple process model visualizations in engineering curricula.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2013410
- PAR ID:
- 10434754
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education Conference
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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