Conference Agenda

The current and future workforce need to be multi-skilled, adaptable, collaborative and creative in finding new solutions to problems. Importantly, they need a good understanding that there needs to be market desirability, technical feasibility and financial viability for the new solution to be a commercial success. Engineering students are highly skilled in technical feasibility, business students are highly skilled with commercial/financial viability and market desirability understanding. What if both of these groups were brought together? Could the skills for a more skilled future workforce be developed? Increase the quality of solutions being developed? Increase the numbers of student business ideas being taken beyond their educational studies? An 8-week program was run between (Engineering Design Department - Omitted for review) and (Business School - Omitted for review) at (University - Omitted for review), to explore collaboration opportunities between business students and engineering students with the aim of building skills of future workers, increase the quality of final solutions being developed and increase the numbers of student businesses ideas being taken beyond their educational studies.

The program paired 6 groups of business students working on a range of product or service based business concepts with an engineering design student mentor. The role of the engineering design mentor was to provide advice and guidance on the technical feasibility and viability of the business students product design concepts. Further to this, the engineering design mentor was then tasked with assisting the business students in developing a minimum viable product (MVP) prototype, which would enable the business students to better communicate their concept.

Feedback from both student mentors, and business students was positive. Business students reflected on the benefits in developing skills in what it may be like to work with a consultant, and became more aware of the implications of technical feasibility on their product offering and business model. They also gained a better appreciation of time and costs in developing the MVP. Student mentors saw benefits in developing skills in client negotiation, communication and in project scope setting, and were exposed to managing changing client requirements, as the business students refined their concepts in line with market research gathered, focussing on customer desirability.

This project was financially backed by the (Business School - Omitted for review), and student mentors were paid an hourly rate to a maximum budget of 30 hours of support. Interestingly, feedback from student mentors suggested the experience in itself was invaluable, and in some cases, they went above and beyond the allocated budget of 30 hours as they saw the benefits to their own personal development. Of the six student teams supported, four went on to engage with external support services for developing their ideas further after they graduated. From this four, two registered businesses, and two continued to explore ideas at idea stage out with their university studies. The outcomes of this research are lessons learnt for future implementation of pilot projects of this nature.

Due to the examination-oriented education system in Hong Kong, there is a lack of innovative education. Based on the market research, the current creativity education products do not contain significant elements such as cultures, historicals or traditions that help develop students' creativity.

According to the Hong Kong Intangible Culture Heritage Office, bamboo crafts provide the citizen with a sense of identity and continuity. Bamboo craft is one of the famous traditional techniques in Hong Kong's culture, which are involved in different designs in our daily life such as cookware, containers and building techniques. Besides, there are some items that occasionally appear in seasonal festivals or funerals such as bamboo theatres, offerings and lion-dance. The know-how is provided with enlightening and culturally-identified elements and knowledge to the future generation such as the maker’s mind and design process, that contribute to their personal development and lead to preservation of the Hong Kong traditional crafts. Furthermore, passing down craftsmanship is passing down knowledge which is the essence of education. Possible opportunities are identified for educating bamboo crafts for future generations in order to cultivate students’ creativity, critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Creative education is a process for training students’ creativity and problem-solving skills, it helps them enhance their personal development leading to conduce to their future careers and quality of life. The creativity and innovation industries have become the future trend in Hong Kong's development in order to improve worldwide competitiveness (Legislative Council Secretariat, 2015). Alison(2019) indicated that cultural differences start to emerge in the very early stage when we are children, and those differences play out in all sorts of subtle differences in the way we think, reason and act. Student is one of the stages of children that are easy to integrate into different cultures. The purpose of this study is to develop techniques for using traditional craft learning and teaching materials to improve students' cultural and creative abilities and to inherit traditional Hong Kong handicrafts.

How can we teach empathy to design students? How might we encourage them to consider people beyond their own perspectives? Can Product Design students be empowered to make a positive change in the life of another? Here we propose a way to start the conversation, using matchsticks.

This project challenges universities to beyond the obvious ethical and social issues framed around sustainability, and asks Undergraduate Design Students to engage with a demographic that is typically underrepresented both in society, and in design intervention; prison inmates.

In order to encourage a more empathic approach to Design, working in collaboration with HMP Loudham Grange, First Year Product Design Students at Nottingham Trent University were set a 2-week Design Project that challenged them to improve life within the confines of a prison cell.

Within Prison systems, knowledge is currency. Those with creative ability, have an asset that can be utilised to improve their personal quality of life in addition to being used as a bargaining tool. This often leads to conflict within the system, as debts and inequality are created by those who can and those who cannot.

Matchsticks have become a fundamental part of this system, as the combination of their simple construction power, and the unlimited time to think within a prison environment, enables inmates to come up with creations of beauty and functionality.

If knowledge of how to construct with matchsticks could be democratised, agency to create could be given to all those willing to learn, reducing conflict. This project looks at ways this knowledge can be shared throughout the prison and takes a true Human Centred Design approach.

Over the course of 2 weeks, student groups were tasked with creating products that improved quality of life within a prison cell, utilising matchsticks, and construction techniques available to inmates. Guided by an expert Prison Officer, students collaborated to generate visual, wordless guides that would enable any inmate to generate their products.

Overall the project was a success, with a number of innovative outcomes being produced, and assumptions challenged. This result was confirmed via an end of project questionnaire with students commenting that the experience was immersive, with designing from the perspective of a prison inmate being a “truly different experience as a user”.

In addition to encouraging empathy and a human centred design approach, this project gave students the opportunity to reflect on the role of the designer, giving space to contemplate on their own purpose and role within the design industry. Typically university projects are driven towards work like experience and portfolio building, meaning projects are often commercially motivated. This project allowed students the opportunity to work outside of their commercially driven comfort zone, and presents them with a real world opportunity to make a positive impact on the lives of others.

This paper addresses the evaluation of the quality of a ‘Design-for-Do-It-Yourself’ framework by running a series of experiments and using questionnaires for both numerical assessment and open questions. The ‘Design-for-DIY’ framework was established in previous studies, as part of a scenario in which the professional designer facilitates laypersons to design for themselves. The scenario considered (a) a counter direction to today’s distant human-product relationship in the mass-production context, (b) the layperson’s innate capability and desire to create, (c) the designer’s responsibility (the product being the mediator between industry and consumer), as well as (d) anticipating the great potential of novel making tools and (e) the availability of online information.

The experiments concerned twelve designers who were asked to develop a DIY project for laypersons, to facilitate them in designing and making their own radio receiver.

The research questions addressed in undertaking the Design-for-DIY experiments centred on the quality and usability of the Design-for-DIY framework as a method and tool to support the designer in establishing a DIY project for the layperson. The experiments concerned six runs, each conducted by a different pair of collaborating designers. In doing the experiments, each pair of designers were assigned to the task of running a ‘Design-for-DIY’ project’ by using a set of tools for support: The Design-for-DIY framework (presented as a board game, sketching tools, of paper, glue, tape, radio electronics (for indicating the size of the components).

The range of experiments themselves and the questionnaires subsequently completed by the twelve participants have generated both numerical data on a Lickert scale (graded responses to closed questions) and written recommendations (from observation and answers to open questions).

The experiment concludes that the framework does address the different design tasks and design abstraction levels, it offers freedom to design your own path as a designer, and it addresses the iterative and pedagogic character that was required. According to the participating designers, the framework provided structure, guidance, information and references, and served as a checklist that helped fulfilling the task. The overall structure, with its successive cycles, was new to them but the stages to pass through were intuitively familiar to them, given their design education and experience.