Conference Agenda

Extensive research has focused on the influence of culture on individuals’ performance in design, with either positive or negative effects. Moreover, studies have shown that it is possible to prime individuals’ cultural values to be different and influence their behaviors in design. However, to the best of our knowledge, no study has explored priming culture in design, especially with digital stimuli. Therefore, we conducted a pilot study to explore the influence of priming culture by digital stimuli in design. First, we created video-based digital stimuli to prime individuals’ individualism versus collectivism (IC) cultural values. We tested the digital stimuli in an exercise during a seven-week creative design course that aimed to explore and implement essential creative problem-solving and design thinking methodologies in practice for interdisciplinary students. The results showed that the collectivism digital stimulus increased the participants’ IC value, with statistical significance. However, in the other two conditions, the participants’ IC values also increased, which was unexpected. Therefore, we discuss the role that enjoyable group ideation plays in participants’ IC values. Furthermore, we found that their design aim changes by priming participants’ IC values. These findings can support the development of educational practices aimed at encouraging design novices to design in teams independently of their culture and inspire researchers to further explore the influence of priming culture in design.

This paper outlines a pedagogical approach based on “sketchnoting” to help design students gather, synthesise, and make sense of information. The method combines theory on how people learn with theory on how designers typically think to develop a form of studying, research, and sensemaking useful for both the course and lifelong learning. Based on dual coding theory, the method suggests creating two representations (visual and verbal) of complex information to facilitate sensemaking. Sensemaking is a cognitive process that helps people make sense of their experienced situations. A visual note-taking system, adapted to designers’ thinking, provides a helpful bridge between disciplines with different epistemological foundations but is not without challenges. Objective evaluation of a highly personal sensemaking method is problematic, and students with a background in visual arts may be better prepared to use it. The paper will discuss these issues and relate them to the future challenges that design education must face.

The everchanging technological and digital landscape of the Product Design and Product Design Engineering industry now requires graduates to have a wider range of skills and software knowledge. In particular, there is a need for enhanced skills focused on engineering computer aided design (CAD), virtual reality, 3D visualisation and rendering/animation. This has resulted in graduates requiring a more detailed and rigorous CAD and 3D visualisation syllabus to prepare them adequately for industry. With the increased pressures on delivering a wider range of software teaching alongside a greater range of hardware, the need for a good grounding and understanding of 2D/3D engineering CAD competencies is essential. Subsequently we have identified the need for enhanced engineering CAD teaching and learning within the higher education setting especially within the first-year product design curriculum. As such, there is the need to challenge established pedagogy and delivery methods with regards to CAD tuition in order to explore new delivery methods and alternative educational paradigms to allow educators to equip engineers and designers for future industry requirements.

To enhance the CAD skills of product design students, the product design academic team at Nottingham Trent University have sought to accelerate the learning of core 2D/3D engineering CAD competencies within first year students by providing an accelerated learning program focussed on SolidWorks. This paper explores and reflects on the development of a ‘CAD Bash’, an accelerated teaching block of 2D/3D engineering CAD, utilizing SolidWorks and delivered in week two of the first year product design students higher education journey. Sixty-Two BSc Product Design first year students undertook eight 1.5-2-hour sessions over the course of a 15-hour accelerated synchronous teaching block during a single week. CAD Bash synchronous teaching was also supported by asynchronous content in the form of pre-recorded videos and prepared worksheets/guides.

Prior to commencing ‘CAD Bash’, each student completed a Pre-CAD Bash skills audit to ascertain the student cohorts’ current knowledge/understanding of software programs, situated within Engineering CAD, such as SolidWorks. This survey helped inform the tutors on student prior knowledge allowing adjustments to the level of learning/content delivered. A Post-CAD Bash skills audit was then collected, providing insight into the effectiveness of the accelerated teaching block, thus informing CAD tuition for the remainder of the academic year. This paper also presents student feedback and the findings from CAD Bash to demonstrate the effectiveness and impact of an accelerated CAD teaching block focused on fundamental engineering CAD competencies. Finally, this paper will demonstrate how the delivery of an entire term’s worth of CAD tuition within a single week period not only prepared students better for future CAD learning but has also created room within the CAD syllabus to teach a wider range of software in more depth. Subsequently this has enhanced our entire three-year CAD syllabus for product design students and positively impacted student skill level thus providing greater placement and graduate opportunities in the future.

The demand for enhanced technical competencies in graduates of product design and design engineering courses continues to grow year on year, with industry now requiring students to not only have an appreciation of design and manufacturing, but also a practical understanding of electronics and programming. However, traditional electronics and programming education, especially in product design courses, is often received negatively by students, especially by students that are solely driven by the creative aspects of the industry. At Nottingham Trent University (NTU), we identified that students saw a disconnect between their design education and their electronics and programming teaching and learning, yet there was a desire to understand more about how products function. Within the BSc Product Design course at NTU, there was the desire by the academic team to explore different pedagogies that would have a positive impact on electronics and programming learning, whilst also helping students see a more direct connection with this topic in relation to their future employment. As such, we sought to leverage the use of hackathons to provide an intense practical delivery approach for electronics and programming learning, whilst combining this with a focussed design activity.

A hackathon is an event where teams are constructed to collaboratively engage in an engineering/design challenge that must be completed within a limited period of time, this is usually between twenty-four to forty-eight-hours. The hackathon methodology often focusses on specific design challenges linked to software or hardware development with the aim of realising a new functional outcome. At NTU, we integrated our first single day hackathon into the BSc Product Design course at the end of the 2020/21 academic year. This hackathon was received positively by students allowing them to apply/connect their electronics and programming learning from their taught sessions via a focussed design challenge.

Subsequently, in 2021/22 academic year a two-day hackathon was implemented where student groups compete against each other and are set the challenge to design, manufacture, and programme a remote-control car (RC Car). The developed range of RC Cars were then judged on their aesthetic design, quality of manufacturing and programming before being ranked based upon their ability to navigate a predetermined time trial obstacle course.

In summary, this paper explores the process of developing an electronics and programming curriculum that encourages students to explore the realms of the subject but within a product design context. The implementation of the Hackathon methodology will be detailed with insights shared on the successes and challenges encountered. Finally, student feedback will be presented from the two-day hackathon completed during the 2021/22 academic year with feedback highlighting an overall positive learning experience, with many students showing a desire to take part in future hackathons as well as identifying the relevance of the subject in relation to their degree and future career/professional practice.

In recent years we have developed an embryo of an open approach to education, where students, researchers and company liaisons meet, to together take on a real challenge that the company partner needs to solve. This projects are part of the Sugar network on design thinking. Work conditions are realistic, and the initial brief contains a challenge, but no given solution to be developed, or requirements to work towards.

We have so far collaborated with varied organisations, including large, internationally well-known companies like Bosch, BASF, Tetra Pak and Barilla.

Each kind of participant comes to the challenge with a different purpose, but they all work towards one common goal: to present an innovative proof-of-concept prototype solution to the challenge by the end of the project. For student participants, the project is part of a course in the final year of their studies and works as a transition towards working life. They get to collaborate with students of other disciplines and from other universities around the world and hone their virtual collaboration skills and create something real. They also get to collaborate, and co-create, with industry experts. For company liaisons, the project represents an opportunity to learn new methods, new ways of thinking, a chance of future-proofing development work by collaborating with students and researchers from around the world, but also a way to get new insights into what they are already developing.

We see great potential to further develop and scale this education embryo into a platform that will host a master’s program that accepts a mix of more newly graduated (bachelor) students and students with work experience who are there for a second stint of education. A master’s program would be designed for more long-term commitment to further education (1-2 years), where the project is the backbone of the education program into which course content is added to support the process. Apart from the possibility for companies to have employees participate in the project as liaisons or embedded participants, many Foundational Content Courses (weeks), Workshops (days), and Modules (hours) will be open for practitioners to participate together with students. In addition, the program will also contain Master Classes (hours) taught by practitioners, who then participate as teachers. This will better support lifelong learning and create opportunities for more short-term education commitment and stronger integration between education content and company work assignments, and also better prepare students-about-to-graduate for work life expectations.

Currently, we are running two Sugar network projects in which employees from Saab are participating in varied ways. Some are in for the full five months, some join only for the more theoretical bookclub, and some join singular workshops. In this way, we practice a learning by prototyping approach in line with what we teach. This paper will present both our thoughts on the overall master program, as well as learnings from the past years and our more intense current set-up.