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During design, different forms of reasoning shape the designers’ decision-making. As a result, the ability to fluently transition across various forms of reasoning is essential. The purpose of this study is two-fold: first is to introduce and explain the concept of Semantic Fluency in Design Reasoning, as the ability to transition across multiple forms of reasoning fluently. To identify these transitions, this study used the Design Reasoning Quadrants framework, which represents four quadrants: experiential observations (reasoning based on observations and experiences), trade-offs (reasoning recognizing multiple competing design requirements), first-principles (reasoning requiring disciplinary understandings), and complex abstractions (reasoning in envisioning new situations). The second purpose of this study is to illustrate semantic fluency in a design review conversation. We selected and presented three different forms of transitions identified through our analysis of conversations between students and design reviewers. Our analysis revealed evidence of semantic fluency in young designers. Mike, one of the students, demonstrated fluency across three quadrants (experiential observations, trade-offs, and first-principles). Lisa and David demonstrated two-quadrant transitions. Lisa had fluency from experiential observations to trade-offs, and David transitioned from experiential observations to first-principles. We recommend the intentional use of design reviews to elicit student reasoning in design and adopt questioning strategies to promote fluency across different forms of design reasoning. 

With increasing challenges to health care in the foreseeable future, novel technology solutions are increasingly needed. Meanwhile, biomedical engineers are increasingly asked to develop user-centered solutions (i.e., desired by the end users). Nevertheless, the importance of user-centeredness is often neglected in the innovation process. It remains unclear about the interplay between thinking of solution novelty and desirability in addition to feasibility, and thus it is challenging for biomedical engineering educators to balance the teaching of the above two aspects in a BME design curriculum. This study aims to develop a preliminary version of a user-centered innovation potential assessment instrument applicable to diverse biomedical engineering design projects. The assessment instrument was adapted from File and Purzer (2014)’s definition of innovation potential (1) feasibility (2) viability (3) desirability and (4) novelty. Among these aspects, we focused on assessing feasibility, desirability and novelty, which can be quantified and assigned to each design idea proposed by the students. As the first attempt, we targeted students’ innovation potential in the design prototyping phase. To validate our preliminary development, we gave an in-class design task for smart pill dispenser to 30+ pairs of senior students enrolled in the BME capstone design course. To assess the design ideas, the instructor and his teaching assistant (two of the authors on the paper) applied a thematic analysis. We first identified patterns from the submitted design ideas by extracting key attributes including dispenser’s portability, tracking/reminding capability, safety, and easy to use. We then estimated the frequency and novelty of these key attributes appearing in each design idea and converted each of them to a 5-point scale. Finally, we calculated a composite score for user-centered innovation potential by multiplying the scales on feasibility, desirability and novelty. We believe this study has added value to improving our understanding of user-centered innovation potential in an undergraduate biomedical engineering curriculum. With further development and scaled-up validation, we may be able to use the instrument to provide insights into developing teaching interventions for stimulating user-centered innovative potentials among biomedical engineers. 

In the innovation process, design practice involves multiple iterations of framing and reframing under high levels of uncertainty and ambiguity. Additionally, as user desirability is a significant criterion for innovative design, designers' empathy in the framing and reframing process is considered a critical user-centered design ability that engineering students should develop. In this context, this study aims to discuss how problem framing and empathy manifestation interplay in the innovation process. As an exploratory study, this study investigates biomedical engineering (BME) students’ reframing processes and decisions in a one-semester design project involving problem definition and concept identification. This investigation is guided by the following research questions: 1) how do engineering students perceive the relationship between empathy and reframing in the innovation process, 2) how and how often do they make reframing decisions over the stages of problem definition and concept identification, and 3) how different are reframing processes and decisions between teams with higher and lower empathetic design tendency scores? This study was conducted in a junior-level design course, including 76 BME students. We collected and analyzed three data sources: students’ self-reflection reports about their reframing processes, empathic design tendency score, and interviews with selected teams and instructors. The results demonstrated that more than half of the students perceived the connection between empathy and their reframing decisions and that they usually had one reframing moment in the stages of problem definition and concept identification. Also, the findings illustrate triggers for their reframing moments, information sources guiding their reframing processes, changes made through reframing, and influences of reframing decisions on team project processes. Furthermore, the comparison of the selected two teams revealed two differences in reframing processes between the high and low empathic design tendency-scoring teams. The authors believe that the study expands engineering education research on engineering students’ empathy and problem-framing by illustrating students’ reframing processes throughout a design project and exploring the interplay of empathy and reframing processes. Also, based on our study findings, engineering design educators can promote student empathy development by including more project activities and evaluation criteria related to empathic design and providing formative feedback on their reframing processes. 

One of the aims of biomedical engineering is to facilitate the development of innovative technologies to address socioeconomic challenges in healthy living and independent aging. Realizing such innovations requires empathy, agility, and creativity. This project aims to support the professional development of a competent biomedical engineer workforce that can effectively accomplish emphatic innovation, and one that can frame and re-frame problems through the innovation process. Our research examined how engineering students empathize with users and develop empathic abilities that have implications on their design innovation skills. The project team developed empathic innovation workshops and embedded them into existing biomedical engineering capstone courses. Data were collected using surveys, student project reports, ideation tasks, and observations. These workshops resulted in significant changes in students’ emphatic tendencies. From our qualitative studies, we also conjectured that the overall empathic potency of a student design team helped facilitate problem re-framing based on user input. These findings contribute to the literature on the critical role of innovation behaviors in relationship to empathic design tendencies in the context of biomedical engineering, as well as suggest instructional practices designed to promote empathy, agility, and creativity. 

Abstract This position paper is motivated by recent educational reform efforts that urge the integration of engineering in science education. We argue that it is plausible and beneficial to integrate engineering into formal K-12 science education. We illustrate how current literature, though often implicitly, discusses this integration from a pedagogical, epistemological, or methodological argumentative stance. From a pedagogical perspective, a historically dominant argument emphasizes how engineering helps make abstract science concepts more concrete. The epistemological argument is centered on how engineering is inherently interdisciplinary and hence its integrative role in support of scientific literacy and more broadly STEM literacy is natural. From a methodological perspective, arguments focus on the engineering design process, which is compatible with scientific inquiry and adaptable to answering different types of engineering questions. We call for the necessity of spelling out these arguments and call for common language as science and engineering educators form a research-base on the integration of science and engineering. We specifically provide and discuss specific terminology associated with four different models, each effectively used to integrate engineering into school science. We caution educators against a possible direction towards a convergence approach for a specific type of integrating engineering and science. Diversity in teaching models, more accurately represents the nature of engineering but also allows adaptations based on available school resources. Future synthesis can then examine student learning outcomes associated with different teaching models.