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PurposeThis study aims to investigate the use of a sociotechnical case study as a means of integrating social and technical dimensions into an undergraduate engineering sustainability technical elective course. Design/methodology/approachThe “Big Wind Project” case study used a microhistory approach to engage students in the complexities of sustainable engineering, aiming to facilitate their exploration of the sociotechnical nature of engineering sustainability projects. Focused on a controversial wind energy project in Hawaii, the Big Wind Project case study served as a pedagogical tool in the course for engaging engineering students in complex sustainability challenges. FindingsThirty-nine students who engaged in the case study lesson responded to questions about their perceptions of the case and the role of stakeholders and other social dimensions in engineering decision-making and agreed that we could use their responses in this research. While many students acknowledged the importance of accounting for social dimensions, their discussions frequently reflected a persistent tendency of engineering work to view outcomes through a dualistic technical-vs-social lens rather than an integrated sociotechnical lens. Originality/valueThis study examined how a case study reveals and supports students’ navigation of the complexities of sociotechnical engineering sustainability work. 

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. 

Engineering designers, who are increasingly tasked with solving complex problems, leverage various forms of support to practice and develop their design skills as well as ultimately navigate the complexity of the problems with which they are faced. Design process models are one such form of support, particularly those process models that prescribe how to design. To better understand how process models impact design approaches, this preliminary study analyzed semi-structured interviews—focused on participants’ perceptions of three design process models—with six upper-level mechanical engineering students. Across participants’ responses, we identified eight dimensions used to distinguish the usefulness of each process model: impacts considered, project scope, stakeholder interactions, problem definition, project deliverable, solution novelty, solution type, and process applicability. In addition, participants differentiated the three process models based on iteration and the level of detail within a model. Our findings highlight the importance of accounting for varying interpretations across process model users and suggest that students would benefit from multiple design process models, including process models that recognize society and people in engineering decision-making. 

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.