Conference Agenda

In spring 2022, we implemented e-portfolios at a product design course for engineers in the bachelor's programme on ‘Sustainable Engineering’ at the University of Applies Sciences, Ansbach. The use of e-portfolios was new to both students and lecturers. To evaluate the effect the e-portfolio had on students, we accompanied the implementation with surveys and interviews.

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the evaluated results. Among other things, the following three main findings convinced us to continue with e-portfolio work. First, ~91% of the interviewed students felt that they were supported very well by our introduction. Second, ~93% got along well / very well with the functions of the e-portfolio software. Third, ~86% of those interviewed appreciated the freedom of design.

Prior to the implementation of e-portfolios in our first test course, we identified the following factors as crucial for the successful implementation of e-portfolios: a comprehensive personal introduction, extensive information material, continuous guidance, clear work instructions, room for flexibility and creativity to foster learners' individual strengths, and exchange between learners and teachers. This paper reflects on these initial factors.

The aspects identified for further improvement in the second round of e-portfolios, in the summer of 2023, are better technical preparation of the lecturers, the communication of technical borders in advance, timing of the accompanying e-portfolio workshops and a more comprehensive promotion of teamwork. The suggested modifications will be discussed in detail in this paper.

In September 2021 the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering (IDE) implemented a completely revised bachelor. Important differences between the old and the new bachelor are its focus on design for higher complexity, the teacher as a coach, and the need for students to learn in an autonomous way. Within the bachelor’s course Understanding Product Engineering (UPE), first year engineering students are introduced to the world of physical embodiment of products. This includes materials and design, manufacturing techniques, functional analysis, product architecture and mechanics modeling. In the past years we used a classical approach in teaching mechanics of materials using direct instructions and problem-based learning as the learning approach. Unfortunately, many design coaches observed that the acquired engineering knowledge was applied superficially or even left out of scope in several students’ capstone design projects.

To stimulate autonomous learning and increase the retention time of theory and skills on mechanics of materials we introduced Productive Failure (PF) as our pedagogical framework in UPE. Many papers show positive results of this framework and prove it works for different situations. In the cohort of 2021-2022 we used PF for the first time as our main framework and applied it in our teaching and workshops. Based on our reflections and students’ feedback we found out that some workshops worked better than others, but we also concluded that the general approach of the PF pedagogy was lacking a translation into an effective design of the workshops.

This paper will present our first iteration on designing the didactical model consisting of lectures, workshops, and self-study. The model builds upon constructive alignment, where learning objectives, activities, and assessment are designed side-by-side. Based on the learning objectives, first the final summative assessment is designed. With this as a backbone, the weekly workshops are developed, consisting of a formative assessment (in the form of a quiz), workshop assignments, and an instructive video. We propose a hands-on model which aids in applying the PF pedagogy in engineering courses, consisting of a method to develop workshop assignments and a didactical approach to guide and coach students through the process. We will show how we applied this model in our own first-year bachelor course Understanding Product Engineering.

We will reflect on our learnings on the interdependence of PF pedagogy and our didactical application in the second iteration of the course. The paper will finalize with an outlook where we will present our future research on the retention time when applying this method in UPE and other engineering courses at IDE.

With the rapid improvements and efforts made to improve ways to utilize eXtended Reality (XR) this paper looks at how sustainability considerations to XR are affecting the design process. Although internationalization is one of many advantages of XR, higher education research repeatedly recalls and builds upon local use-cases rather than more global interconnected alternatives. Many universities are currently developing their digital capabilities where XR is an enabler for various educational purposes. Although many learning examples are built around an authentic and local practice, the global possibilities of interceded activities using multiple variations of XR (i.e. VR, AR or MR) are rare. It is arguably important to establish more interconnected set of use-cases in order to excel this technology practice. Also, past methodological considerations have also been presented through guided design steps once working with elements of XR. This paper, however, concentrate on the need for a XR scrutinizing process of sustainability. Addressing international collaboration, use and practices of team-based design processes are looked at to see the effect XR can have direct and indirect on sustainability's three pillars of environmental, economic and social concern. A qualitative exploration using AR and VR experiments, and interviews with groups of design students, expert-users and solution-providers. All cases investigated are characterized by internationalization, involving multiple nodes, (e.g. partnering companies and universities). The paper is built on insights from several international co-design projects and looks in detail at how design aspects are emphasized on activity-level, and by also uncovering involved activities. The aim is to explore how digital enabled design using XR can be presented from a sustainability point-of-view. Rather than looking at output of a use-case scenario, the process of how to reach there, is at focal point. What is referred to as the Open XR runtime standards are currently extending the possibilities between hardware and software interoperability, which can potentially increase XR sustainability by making the technology more accessible. By identifying and exploring remote design processes, collaborations that utilize a mix of technological platforms is looked at and how interaction of XR practices and processes affect aspects like internationalization and interconnectedness. With a growing number of students, professional workers and companies trying to benefit and excel from new remote-working norms, a better understanding is needed to support distributed and sustained XR collaboration. Ultimately, this paper can bring more attention to how XR is practiced and how sustainability affects several digitally enabled prototyping steps and practices.

In order to develop innovative products or services, it is essential to understand users to identify their latent needs. The main goal of user research is to gain insights into user lives. Insight in design is defined as a “clear, deep, meaningful perception into a particular design context” [1] that can be achieved by empathising with users. Empathy has been researched in psychology, which influences the research of empathy in design. Although there are no widely accepted definitions of empathy in design, empathy is commonly understood as an attempt to understand users comprehensively [2]. To gain insight, empathising deeply with users is one of the most critical challenges in the design process.

Some studies focused on how designers empathise with users [3] and how designers think during the process [4]. However, the difficulties for novice designers in learning empathising skills and in conducting the process by themselves still remain. There is a need for research to identify what good insights are and what the best ways to empathise with users are. In particular, in design education, it is necessary to provide appropriate evaluation and advice to students to help them acquire design skills. Making it possible to evaluate not only the creativity of solutions, such as products and services but also the results of user understanding may enable more accurate advice and achieve practical education.

The aim of this research is to investigate design educators’ perceptions of good user understanding in design projects as the first step of support development. This study focuses on responding to a research question: “what are the perspectives for evaluating user understanding in product/service development projects in design education?”

Semi-structured interviews of thirty minutes to one hour were conducted with ten faculty members involved in design education or design practice. Examples of questions are “how students could gain insights in design projects?”, “what are the most impressive insights, and why?”, and “what are the most common mistakes students make in understanding users?”. All interview data were transcribed, and qualitative content analysis was conducted. The interview transcripts were read and coded by two researchers. The result reveals evaluation perspectives that change with the stage of a design project and are helpful for evaluation and advice to students on user understanding in design education.

[1] Kolko, J. (2010), “Abductive Thinking and Sensemaking: The Drivers of Design Synthesis”, Design Issues, MIT Press, Vol. 26 No. 1, pp. 15–28.

[2] Chang-Arana, Á.M., Piispanen, M., Himberg, T., Surma-aho, A., Alho, J., Sams, M. and Hölttä-Otto, K. (2020), “Empathic accuracy in design: Exploring design outcomes through empathic performance and physiology”, Design Science, Vol. 6 No. 16

[3] Smeenk, W., Sturm, J. and Eggen, B. (2019), “A Comparison of Existing Frameworks Leading to an Empathic Formation Compass for Co-design”, International Journal of Design, Vol. 13 No. 3, pp.53–68.

[4] Dorst, K. (2011), “The core of 'design thinking' and its application”, Design Studies, Vol. 32 No. 6, pp. 521–532.

Design based-learning is a rooted approach to design education through which students learn to design by developing projects within the design studio. The design studio aims to recreate the real-world interactions designers must engage in within a business-like environment. In design-based learning pedagogy, the physical or digital space of the classroom becomes crucial for students to collaborate in developing their projects with lecturers, technicians, and peers. The collaborative environment allows students to develop the competencies needed to solve the design issue at hand, also building their knowledge based on what they learn from others. Among other levels of collaborative learning activities, group projects are often employed to foster peer learning, allowing students to develop high-complexity projects relatively briefly. Teamwork becomes a rich learning opportunity for design-specific and transversal skills. Group projects in an educational context foster collaborative learning, as effective intra-group collaboration becomes crucial for students to develop projects successfully. However, a great emphasis on the team could inhibit the possibility for students to cooperate at the class level. Indeed, as also shown in previous studies, this can lead to competitive class environments which might limit the willingness of student groups to share information and competences with other groups in the idea that helping others could result in a loss for their project and team final evaluation. Inter-group sharing of knowledge is, therefore, sometimes conceived by students as a threat (i.e., the success of others’ projects might compromise the success of our project) rather than an opportunity for improvement. This major shortcoming of competitive inter-group environments becomes particularly relevant in light of the growing recognition of the role of collaboration and cooperation in addressing the complex challenges that await us for the construction of a sustainable present and the near future.

From this issue, considered relevant for the conference theme, the authors develop the present research to investigate the role of instructional design activities and instructors in mitigating competition in a business-like design studio in favour of a more effective inter-group collaboration. Having collected evidence of such phenomena in previous research, the authors decided to rethink instructional design activities. The paper presents a critical action research iteration in which the researchers developed and tested an instructional design strategy to foster intergroup collaboration in a business-like design studio. Critical participatory action research is a type of action research that aims to reconsider particular instructional practices starting from their current untoward consequences. The study was conducted in the final design studio of the Design & Engineering Master of Science at [XXX] and involved 51 students divided into 12 teams, and data were collected through participant observation in class (i.e., authors in the role of the teaching staff) and through a final questionnaire at the end of the course. The contribution aims to present the instructional activities designed, providing a hands-on example of possible strategies to foster inter-group collaboration and presenting the emerging themes from the qualitative data analysis.