Conference Agenda

Design projects units are an essential element for Design Engineering students at our University and represent 20 ECTS credits at level-5 and 30 ECTS credits at level-6. Students integrate and apply knowledge from a range of taught units and subjects they may be unfamiliar with through self-directed learning. Students also demonstrate they meet specific elements of the Engineering Council’s learning outcomes for accredited programmes. For level-5, students work towards individual and group projects; level-6 students work on a single individual project of their own proposal.

Recently, level-6 students have proposed and designed projects requiring AI vision control-systems. These projects presented a problem for supervision, especially during the pandemic, as the department lacked technical expertise, equipment, and experience in application. Students therefore treated these AI subsystems as “black-box” exercises.

To address this issue, technical requirements were compiled from typical use-cases and combined with accessibility of learning material, extent of ecosystem, usability, and compatibility. A range of AI technologies were evaluated before selecting the Nvidia Jetson Nano; these provide a complete on-board workflow of deep-neural-network (DNN) retraining and deployment.

From the existing literature, a streamlined training-programme was developed to introduce the technology to both level-5 and level-6 project students. This provided hands on experience through familiarization with the interface and pretrained DNN models for image classification, object detection, semantic segmentation, and pose estimation.

Level-5 project students were assigned a group project to design and build a part-sorting technical demonstrator utilizing AI object-detection integrated to PLC control. The AI workflow was executed entirely on-board with the Jetson Nano. Students collected and annotated images of scratched and unscratched plate components to create a dataset (ground-truth) before retraining an existing DNN (SSD-mobilenet v2) using Pytorch. Students compiled a simple python script to call the DNN within the device’s DetectNET framework and provide signaling over GPIO to the PLC when detecting scratches and plates. Students also designed the electronic interface and programmed the PLC using ladder-logic to provide electrical control of their sorting machine’s electro-mechanical functions.

Level-6 project students were able to integrate the technology into projects where appropriate and two students chose to do so. One project utilized a similar object-detect workflow to check if chili peppers are ripe for harvest; the only change was to off-board the image capture with ground-truth annotation through an alternative software package (CVAT). The second student used an existing semantic segmentation network (Multi-Human-Parsing) to identify people trapped under collapsed buildings, with GPIO controlling alarms when a threshold is reached for particular classes.

level-5 and level-6 students gained valuable knowledge in the practical application of AI in control systems. The level of learning suitable for proving a design through the use of technical demonstrator rather than at a production level.

Three technical issues were identified through this work:

Specific human-errors in the annotation process were only identifiable once exported to another annotation package such as CVAT.

CVAT became unsupported after sanctions were imposed on Russia and Intel withdrew operations.

Like many semiconductor dependent resources, Jetson Nano’s became difficult to source.

The first year of a student’s higher education significantly affects their performance and probability of completion. Tinto found that the first few weeks are critical for the students regarding motivation, connecting socially and connecting academically. Most of the students who decide to quit or drop out do so during the first weeks of their education. Thus, it is imperative to integrate students into their new academic environment as effectively as possible, meaning that universities must be aware of and utilize this window of opportunity to give the students a meaningful start.

Every four years a survey is conducted to map how the students in Norway feel (SHoT). In recent years there has been an increase in reported loneliness amongst the students. In SHoT 2022 36% reported that they either miss someone to be with, feel left outside or feel isolated often or very often. This is an increase from 2018 where 30% of the students reported this. Another striking result from this research is that 34% report that they only have a few friends and 7% report that they do not have any friends.

At the University of Agder the civil engineering first-year students, of both bachelor and master, were assigned a start-up project in their first week. This start-up project was designed by the some of the employees at the civil engineering department. The students were divided into groups of 4-5 students. The purpose of the start-up project was to design a small student cottage were functionality, sustainability and design comprised the main assessment criteria. They also had to build a model in a scale of 1:20. The students had three days to complete the project and presented their final products in front of the rest of their class, and a jury consisting of employees at the civil engineering department.

After having the presentation of the final projects, a survey was distributed to the students. 88% rated the project as 4 (to a large degree) and 5 (to a very large degree) when it came to academic collaboration. Furthermore, when asked to which extent the project prompted a social arena and contributed to gaining new friends, 90% and 79% respectively, replied either 4 or 5. The results of this study can provide other educational institutions with insights on how to meet the first-year students, and how to provide a social arena. By having a start-up project which is both a theoretical and physical task, the students find other students to befriend and work with.

Design fiction develops tangible prototypes to assess factors in a near future in a more concrete way. The feedback loop into the present, however, remains as a set of recommendations or guidelines for new product development. This paper describes a methodology that includes reframing specific factors from the future to the present by using two related problem formulations, one in the future and one in the present. The methodology is used in an MSc of Industrial Design course where student teams work on project formulations for Space settings in a near future and reframe the projects to situations on Earth where factors concerning the problem, context, users or working principles are revisited, interpreted and reworked to create a value proposition for the present in a concrete manner.

The findings indicate that insights can be interpreted at various levels of abstraction and, when combined with critical thinking, stimulate the reuse of processual aspects and reframing of specific factors addressed in the future formulation into the current project formulation.

The learning space in the 21st century, cannot be limited to a closed enviroment within a classroom. It is important to push the limits of both, creativity and innovation on the mind of the apprentice. Mixing apparently dissimilar topics, awakening intrinsic motivation and following a design methodology are the keys to achieve an efficient learning. Challenge based on learning, it is an integrative pedagogical approach that combines experience, cognition, and behavior. This approach, takes advantage of students' interest in finding practical meaning to education, while developing key skills competencies in a world mediated by rapid technological advance and sustainability. On this paper, a pedagogical strategy is exposed to impact first-year students in the application of a design methodology and the development of competencies in graphic expression, manufacturing, critical thinking, and tolerance to frustration. These skills, were obtained from the challenge of designing, materializing and testing a floating luminaire that works from solar energy. These prototypes, were manufactured with sustainable materials and processes, considering as an aesthetic/formal referent the work of Ersnt Haeckel and as a physical principle, Archimedes' law to achieve buoyancy and stability on water. The satisfying outcome of this learning experience, consisted on 56 luminaries that enlightened and floated over the water mirror of the cultural center of the XXXX´s university library, Luis Echavarría Villegas.

This paper is an ongoing research study that highlights sustainability and social ventures to create connections between academic and business worlds in order to design towards the new functions of XXI century’s reality.

The authors underline how design practices can help to create a pilot project, implementing social changes. This means that governmental inefficiency presents itself as a new problem that designers, educators and entrepreneurs must face, demanding to endlessly diagnose the situation. This research proposes to redesign and develop a self-sustainable habitat for minorities, such as, refugees, something that is integrated in the city and not isolated. The issue of building in historic centers is essential to understand the life of the city in a changing world. That is, it is the ability to design systems and not compact and definitive frames.

Sustainability issues are characterized by an extraordinary complexity and ambiguity as a reflex of liquid reality (Bauman, 2005), but there is still unsustainable development due to globalization of resource-intensive economic progress and consumerist lifestyle (Heinrichs and Biermann, 2015). In order to sustainability be recognized with a pluralistic view, it is urgent to develop policy instruments, such as sustainable strategies, mutual methods, and collective goals. In view of COP26 (2021), sustainability is increasing in importance relative to social changes. Nevertheless, empirical outcomes show that methodologically it is hard to translate into practice in education discussion and that often it is a question of communication rather than sustainability. “We then discuss whether sustainability communication is something ‘unique‖’ or simply communication that happens to deal with sustainability.” (Newig et al. 2013: 2978). For instance, having a discourse oriented to students, means using communication about sustainability (CaS) as it is an excellent opportunity, a sender-receiver-oriented and one-to-many communication mode, sharing ideas about sustainability (Fischer et al, 2015).

Methodologically, this research is sustained by transversal thinking, pattern-language and sustainability, connecting established methods with new techniques.

The paper present some cases studies with design students where creative activities transformed the entire urban community.

The authors want to prove that designing inclusive systems can serve as a stimulus to attract companies, creating new stakeholders that stimulate new product development and innovation.

The goal of traditional supply chain spare parts management is to maintain a minimum level of spare parts inventory whilst still being able to fulfil demand and maintain customer satisfaction. Much research has been undertaken to optimise product flow and optimise stock levels generally requiring transporting spare parts to the point of use from a centralised storage location. While moving from a decentralised to a centralised network can lower costs and improve service performance it will have a negative impact on the environment due the increase in transportation needs.

It has been recognised that Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies have the potential to positively disrupt the supply chain by reducing the requirement to hold and transport stock, produce cost and lead time savings, while also guarding against supply chain disruption. This paper reports on the outcomes of a joint research project conducted between Bournemouth University (BU) and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) to identify specific areas where additive manufacturing could be implemented into the organisation to have a positive impact on the supply chain and promote responsible innovation in their component design. The RNLI is a charity which operates using donations from members of the public and believe it imperative to produce efficiency across all areas of the organisation, and to spend money in the most effective ways.

The project has analysed a number of engineering components alongside the RNLI’s supply chain data which has led to the development of two educational case studies which promote the benefits AM could offer the RNLI and the wider industry. The two specific components investigated were the ‘Mast Latch Handle’ and the ‘Sea Water Inlet Strainer’. The ‘Mast Latch Handle’ is an aluminium part manufactured traditionally from a stock piece of material. The ‘Sea Water Inlet Strainer’ is a component used on a variety of different lifeboat class’s, to stop debris from entering the engine cooling system. It is currently fabricated from a wrapped stainless steel sheet and two stainless steel flanges either end. Both case studies detail the redesign of the parts for AM providing equivalent or better performance, reduced weight, reduced cost and significantly shorter lead times.

The project successfully demonstrated the advantages that additive manufacturing could have on the RNLI and their values. With the use of additive manufacturing, the RNLI now understand that they could achieve consolidated part reductions, reduced lead times, less material waste, weight reductions and reduced transportation. Using AM would lead to business and environmental advantages for the organisation.

The project has resulted in AM being implemented as a focus into the RNLI engineering team time plan. Additive manufacturing is now at the forefront when new and existing engineering designs are conceived, and a manufacturing process is selected.

Further work is required such as upskilling RNLI engineering teams on designing for AM, and on the execution of the AM process, followed by the implementation of an AM facility on site in RNLI Poole Headquarters.

In order to respond to rapid changes in society and the economy, it is expected to develop human resources who understand the social issues of the SDGs, can proactively propose solutions and possess skills based on conventional knowledge-oriented education. In Japan, the SDGs are being addressed in the education sector; many high schools have started to offer classes on the SDGs. However, promoting education on the SDGs is a huge challenge for teachers in the existing high school education system, as there are no clear teaching methods or educational materials. In particular, there are no good methods for educating students on how to discover social issues from familiar places and more in-depth. Teachers urgently need to know how to support students in this relatively new education process.

This study aims to focus on the part of social issue discovery in the process of SDG education for high school students using design thinking and to propose a support method that can help teachers solve the problems they are facing so that high school students can discover better and deeper social issues.

Using the SDGs Challenge Project of Japan Fukusho High School as a case study, 27 high school teachers from various domains such as language, society, and arts were educated on the SDGs for third-year high school students in 2021. A questionnaire survey of teachers was conducted on the difficulties in identifying social issues in this context, and a questionnaire survey of 314 students was conducted after the class. In response to the results, support proposals were made according to the educational process to be carried out in 2022. A questionnaire of 22 teachers in charge in 2022 who received this support and a questionnaire of 301 students were conducted, the results of which were compared with those of the previous year to analyze the effectiveness of the support methods and to make support proposals for teachers so that students can better identify social issues.

The 2022 teacher questionnaire showed that more teachers are confident about education on social issues and that many teachers think that the educational tools are effective. Total support for the education process is needed. Specifically, it was found that preliminary support such as workshops on understanding design thinking and understanding SDGs, a support system to facilitate teaching, as well as a reflection after the project and improvement of instructional materials based on the content of the questionnaire, are needed.

This study evaluated the worksheets used in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Challenge Project from the students’ perspective, and identified requirements for teaching materials to help students who are unfamiliar with design-based learning learn about the SDGs. We analysed students’ and teachers’ feedback in worksheet surveys. The findings revealed that the ideation process was the most difficult aspect for high school students. The reported reasons were categorised as originality, idea diversification, idea convergence, consistency with problems, feasibility, specificity, iterability, complexity, and procedure. Teachers mentioned that students did not sufficiently focus on problem identification, causing subsequent difficulties in the ideation process. Teaching material should meet the following requirements: (1) demonstrating methods for diversification and convergence of ideas to specify scaffolding, (2) clear goal setting in the problem identification process, and (3) iterability to allow for change according to the design process.

Philippe Bihoux, in his 2014 work, L’Âge des low tech: vers une civilization techniquement soutenable suggests that developing increasingly high-tech solutions to address the sustainability crisis is a hopeless cause [1]. Instead, an appreciation of energy sobriety and material conservation as we move to embrace low-tech developments would yield more impactful results.

Internationally, design courses offer a range of approaches to teaching and embedding sustainability theory amongst their student body. From focusing on behaviour change [2], and imparting knowledge on sustainable design and manufacturing approaches [3] to a focus on developing product solutions which encourage improved product lifespans [4] there are many worthwhile pedagogies which can be imparted to our students.

Low-tech approaches to sustainability require designers to question assumptions held about users’ energy needs through the lens of energy sobriety. Their solutions should reduce technological intensity and complexity whilst encouraging a commons approach to the implementation of a solution.

This paper investigates and discusses a project-based learning approach to sustainability design education which focuses on Bihoux’s ideas around sobriété and low-tech development to challenge students to solve everyday design problems with reduced technological intensity.

[1] P. Bihoiux, The Age of Low Tech, English Tr. Bristol, United Kingdom: Bristol University Press, 2014.

[2] C. Boks and J. Z. Daae, “Design for sustainable behaviour in design education,” in Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education: Design Education for Future Wellbeing, EPDE 2012, 2012, no. September, pp. 611–616.

[3] A. T. Butt, E. W. Causton, and M. A. Watkins, “Embedding Sustainability in the Engineering Curriculum: a Complimentary Approach To Performance Engineering and Sustainable Design,” in Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education, E and PDE 2022, 2022, no. September, pp. 9–14, doi: 10.35199/epde.2022.24.

[4] C. Green, “Thinking Beyond the Product Moment: Addressing Issues Around ‘Keeping,’” in Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education, E and PDE 2022, 2022, no. September, doi: 10.35199/epde.2022.103.

Nepal has been facing waste management problems for a long time. This is especially true for cities, but also increasingly for rural areas. Improper treatment, lack of organization and management of solid waste (SW), contributes to pollution and toxic emissions, which inflict harm to both the human health and the environment. This study responds to the question on how solid waste management systems (SWMS) in rural areas of Nepal can be improved. Rural regions of Nepal are dealing with profound sustainability challenges related among others to the rapid expansion of tourism and fast changing infrastructure. The theory part of the study discusses SWMS and related terminology and concepts and investigates SWMS practices in Nepal, both on a general basis and in a rural mountainous region. Literature shows deficiencies of the entire SWMS in Nepal, for example in form of inadequate communication between the government and local stakeholders, including the lack of participation possibilities for managing waste in residential areas. In rural mountainous areas, frequently visited by tourists, a huge waste problem is the lack of waste bins. This problem is met practically by applying a participatory design approach (PDA) for designing a waste bin with residents and local stakeholders. The waste bin solution is functional, sustainable, and contextualized for a village in Lower Mustang, Annapurna Region, Nepal. The aim of the study was twofold, to make a feasible solution and to create awareness among designers, local stakeholders, and decision-makers about the current situation, including more systemic design possibilities for future development. The project/practice part contains field research within SWMS in rural areas of Nepal by applying PDA and other design tools/methods. Primary research, data collection and investigation are conducted by visiting the designated location, including other nearby affected areas. The project is part of a Nepal – Norway collaboration (SAMAJ) which exchanges Master students from design and planning from both countries. The goal of the SAMAJ project is to meet the SDGs with help of sustainable design for everyday and in different cultural settings. Applying insights from theory concepts in a real-life settings allows students among others to apply and test participatory design methods, and understand the divergence of design theory and practice.

Designers draw inspiration from the societal needs around them. In Design Education, efforts have been made to assess the potential personal, social, health and environmental impact of a design in its early stages. To add to this body of knowledge we updated the Future Scenario Development, Play and Design methodology. This scenario development approach aims at exploring futures that are more than just a few years ahead of us. In the master course Create the Future, the students follow this approach to develop a future context for their own conceptual design phase. When they subsequently design “their own future” we want to make them aware of the multifaceted effects of their designs. We therefore expanded the method to include responsibility and societal influence assessment tools such as the Product Impact Tool (PIT), and Constructive Technology Assessment (CTA).

With a case study, based on the results of an Industrial Design Engineering Master course concerning the design of the “Future of Healthcare”, we will show how this Design of the Future methodology is able to explain the present and future interplay between society, culture and technology. We will especially dive deeper into the experiences with the assessment tools and how they influenced the design phase and eventually the design concepts presented by the students.

From the results of the case study we can conclude that our proposed method provides the students with an effective arsenal of tools through which to envision, reflect and design for the future.

Design is a creative and innovative process that takes advantage of engineering's technical knowledge to develop products, services, and benefits for a consumption-driven society. This article highlights the importance of a coordinated approach between design and engineering education as a driver for innovation. To validate this concept, we analyzed several use cases undertaken at a higher education institution that resulted in the systematization of the adopted methodology. Then, a case study, the RnHealth TECH project, has been used to validate the proposed methodology. This project, aims to design and develop new technologies and products, and create interactive materials to prevent and promote awareness regarding the risk of exposure to indoor radon gas, a radioactive gas that tends to accumulate in indoor environments with a known relation to lung cancer. In this context, design and engineering students are collaborating on the design and development of a set of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices for Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) management and thus promote awareness-raising. Although engineering methodologies have tasks that overlap with the design process, with a focus on functionalities, they may face technical implementation constraints. Product design, on the other hand, must respond to user requirements, user interface, market needs, and product manufacturing requirements, with a focus on satisfying consumers. These two areas complement each other, resulting in a continuous improvement process of product design, particularly in the innovation process development. This multidisciplinary synergy between students and researchers works both ways, with each functional area contributing to the work according to its specificity and influencing the final product. This approach not only develops students' specific technical knowledge but also provides them with new skills that can be applied to improve their technological literacy.

This paper focuses on design processes, dynamic repair and sustainable development with the reuse of wood materials.

The project is based on a case study in product design conducted by primary school teaching students.

The content of the education at Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet) for design, arts, and crafts is based on what graduate teachers are going to teach in primary school. The teaching students were selected as participants because they should carry out a work requirement and the design project would help their practice as a graduate teacher. The subject design, art and crafts is an optional course in the Norwegian primary school teachers’ education.

The research question is how dynamic repair, sustainable development and design methods are suitable for teaching themes related to different perspectives on reuse with wood materials.

Describing a sustainable field where there are many sources of knowledge to critically assess the task, assess new ways of joining parts, evaluate new looks, and take into consideration the different types of information that arise in the process. How to set up exploratory teaching will be related to what the teacher wants the students to learn during the program.

In terms of methodology, the examination builds on research-by-design and design process/the creative working model, where the practical aesthetic work with the materials is the deciding factor.

Design process in this learning case is driven by a redesign process owned by the student.

They were asked to design a lamp made of wood and recycled material. With the guidance of a subject teacher educator, teacher students identified their own issues and questions. They then examined the resources they needed to research the topic, thereby acquiring the requisite knowledge. Dynamic repair shows how material consciousness defines the design process from a sustainable perspective.

This study illustrates the profound, though often hidden, consequences that design decisions and processes have on the total human experience. It also describes an example of teaching students to engage with the material world we live in. The research results describe how students use a design process, sustainable development and dynamic repair as a method. How it affects the way the students think in a redesign process. Students should develop skills that are central to learning a skill and living for a more sustainable world

Three potential problems in executing human-centered design (HCD) in an academic environment are (i) lack of sensibility and empathy during ethnographic research, (ii) miss interpretation of qualitative data when designing a solution, and (iii) not being able to ensure that the user will implement the solutions. The objective of this study is to employ human-centered design methodologies and social perspectives to improve ergonomics and efficiency and make agriculture work more pleasant in the Chinampas while, at the same time, enhancing HCD educational exercises. This research article describes how to structure and implement HCD strategies with undergraduate design students working with regenerative farmers using challenge-based learning. This study used an ideal-contextual prototyping approach, and for its implementation, a team of experts and professors brought multiple perspectives and approaches to the project, and they were able to steer the students in terms of sensibility, empathy, and data interpretation, so the design students had more than one approach for each design solution. By implementing a dual-prototyping approach (ideal-contextual), the students acquired the required competencies and handed out a working prototype that could generate a positive impact. This study provides an educational model designed to eliminate the potential problems with HCD and to produce high-impact artifacts.

The challenges that arise in the teaching-learning process, added to unpredictable environments for its development, have led teachers to develop innovate new ways of teaching inside and outside the classroom, as well as with flexible digital models that allow distance learning. Whatever the innovation, it must allow the student to have a great experience in their learning process, as well as meaningful learning.

Given these circumstances, the use of technologies that help and facilitate the learning path for students has become more recurrent and essential. But it cannot be any type of technology but rather those whose implementation is viable in terms of implementation, intelligence, coordination, control, policies and, of course, economically; Technologies that, complemented with teaching techniques such as gamification, have an efficient impact on the teaching process, making it more productive in terms of the use of resources and the achievement of objectives such as the development of skills.

This study presents an in-depth analysis of three successful cases of technology implementation for education within the teaching model of our university, which focuses on the student and favors the development of competencies. In each of these experiences, the results obtained in the learning and development of students' skills will be shown and compared.

The cases to be presented were implemented during the pandemic period in engineering school courses. The applied technologies were: Virtual reality, Simulation and Telepresence.

The results and their impact were statistically validated to record their great contribution to the teaching-learning process. Having validated these technologies, their adoption is highly recommended to apply them for the benefit of education at different levels and areas.

As designing with vulnerable users becomes more prevalent, we need to establish societal and policy guidelines to ensure that such practices adhere to ethical principles to protect both participant and researcher. Vulnerable participants include racial and ethnic minorities, people with additional physical or cognitive needs, elderly individuals, and children (Rios et al. 2016). Many research papers would advocate that design research should be conducted with end user groups to ensure that solutions developed meet the needs and expectations of those most impacted by the issues (Sanders and Stappers, 2008, Mulvale et al., 2019, Shore et al., 2018, Carroll et al. 2021). This approach, however, may not always be ethical or appropriate in design projects at undergraduate level. Along with many of the standard ethical considerations when conducting research with vulnerable groups (such as Person-First, respect, language and communication, presence of guardians, advocates, or carers etc.) (National Disability Authority, 2006), there are also several additional considerations when developing design solutions. Many design projects never reach fruition or may take several years to develop to a functional design. This is even more likely when projects are set within academic institutions involving student projects that are short-lived and not always focused on the implementation of final designs.

Including vulnerable participants in design projects must be beneficial to participants beyond the goals of the project, otherwise alternative methods should be employed. This will allow for an elevated level of trust with participants to continue to engage in design research and testing. Many vulnerable groups may initially be very excited at the prospect of design solutions that can improve their quality of life. They may be very willing to engage in projects as research participants or as co-designers. However, there is a risk that these participants may invest in these projects with great expectations but end up with very little in return. A major ethical concern is that they may feel used and exploited and let down as projects are abandoned or fail to reach the marketplace or indeed reach the marketplace without addressing the original user needs.

This paper explores several case studies of undergraduate product design projects where vulnerable participants have been involved in the design process at various stages and to varying degrees. A case study analysis follows a description of these projects and key findings are discussed. The discussion then unpacks key questions such as: when is it appropriate to involve participants? What are the most useful methods to work with participants? When are alternative methods of research and testing sufficient? How can expectations be managed? And what is the payback for people to participate? The paper concludes by proposing a guide for how and when to involve users as participants in the Undergraduate design process.

Our main intention is designing a sustainable future together in Europe and around the globe while respecting design ownership with the help of co-designing with people from so called foreign cultures and by learning from other cultural codes and minds. This is a question about cultural education in cultural appropriation and provenance in design.

This paper will showcase design methods for co-designing and cross-cultural design processes to educate students and partners from industry in respecting design codes. We are using the elements of edu-care (Scone) related to our knowledge archives for a sustainable academic future.

Regarding the designing – working – producing – and living conditions, the SDGs give us all an orientation for the future. This paper focuses on four SDGs: the SDG No 9 proposes, ‘Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation’. With help of design case studies from students, we are also showcasing SDG 17 – ‘Partnership for the Goals’, not only in Europe. This could give all a perspective on a healthier world through cross cultural co-designing. SDG No 5 ‘Gender and Equality’ and SDG 12 about ‘Responsible Consumption and Production’ are supported by our question about cultural appropriation in the design business, and reference the politically relevant focus, selected by UN for the year 2023.

‘Cultural appropriation’ (Savoy) originally relates to art robbery. It is not only a debate taking place in fashion design since the designer Isabel Marant was criticised, for making profits while using ethnological significant patterns of indigenous people without asking permission. But cultural appropriation in a ‘positive way’ is also the remembrance and ‘revalue’ of techniques / hand crafted techniques, which run the risk of being lost. This knowledge represents our ‘cultural mind’ (Assmann) and our knowledge archive for the future. How we might use this valuable knowledge archive is showcased, using co-design and cross-disciplinary learning. By combining new knowledge connected to rituals, cultural behaviour and old techniques with the technological aid of digital tools of our 4th industrial revolution we can enter a post digitalisation ‘industry 5.0’ era.

Based on the case studies and literature review, this paper discusses different techniques and interactive co-design on different media levels, with stakeholders from different countries in a respectful way. Regarding the question of cultural appropriation and ‘provenance in design’- seven (7) elements meet the needs for a future circular sustainable economy using cross-cultural co-designing.

Questioning the SDGs 9, 17 and 12 with co-designing and cross-cultural design projects during the study-programs in Europe, we could trigger more interactive, cross-cultural projects with this paper. In the 2nd step this paper could help to get more financial support for these kind of project.

Given the contemporary upheaval of climate and war refugees around the globe, the cosmopolitan scale of architecture and its increasing caregiving agenda can not be ignored. How could the first design assignment for students embarking on an architectural education, integrate this critical context already from the outset? This question seems especially pertinent because one tends to mainly remember the first and last experiences that mark learning processes. The primacy effect indeed ensures that one will not soon forget the very first design assignment that kickstarts an architectural education trajectory.

For new students, our school organises a ‘starters afternoon’ as an introduction to our education in architectural engineering. During those 3 hours, students work in groups of 4 on their very first design project. And as we want to introduce co-habitation on a cosmopolitan scale in design education from the very start, we ask them to a work on an emergency shelter. We challenge them to design this with a model on the scale of a ‘Playmobil’-figure. Only basic materials are provided, primarily wooden sticks, plasticine, rope and paper.

Intermittently, and also at the end of the workshop, all models are collectively reviewed with students and tutors from different architectural fields (eg. construction, theory, design). Here, fundamental architectonic elements of design such as form, function, and construction, are put in dialogue with societal debates around social inclusion, justice, human dignity and care. The 'shelter model assignment’ introduces thereby care as an important value, already during the first contact of young students in their training as an architect.

This workshop is now also further developed as a STEM assignment for even younger scholars in secondary schools. This will introduce these youngster at the age of 16 or 17 to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics with a design experience that interlaces technical decisions and solutions with urgent social and societal considerations and co-habitation.

With the service sector’s dominance in the world economy, we have witnessed the development of service design as an emerging field. Not only do design programs offer courses on service design, but there are universities offering undergraduate and graduate programs specific to this field. However, the professional development of service design and its alignment with other design disciplines is still in progress. With this perspective, we aim to take a snapshot of current service design offerings at the university level to discuss their impact on the future of industrial design education. We systematically analyzed the courses and programs of the first 50 design universities with design schools listed on QS World University Rankings by Subject 2022: Art & Design. There are 19 universities offering a total of 82 courses and 12 programs related to service design. Service design courses and programs are more common at the graduate level. The analysis of service design course descriptions shows that the skillset and knowledgebase identified by these programs are not highly unique. Their pedagogical goals are aligned with delivering human-centered design, design research, design thinking, and design strategy content central to industrial design education. Further integration of service design in industrial design programs might mean a decrease in the high-fidelity model-making capabilities of industrial design graduates and an increase in visualization skills for the communication of systems. Every industrial design program must assess and align service design based on existing course offerings to avert redundancies in a competitive resource environment.

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.

Engineering design education has experienced a recent paradigm shift. Online learning was once a novel concept with few universities and courses offered fully online. A consequence of the global COVID-19 pandemic was a shift to online learning as the default for all universities during the period of self-isolation. Pre-pandemic on-campus education considered technologies to support distributed learning as a novel concept, as secondary to in-person education. Now, the engineering design educational community must consider remote learning as equal to in-person learning. We now find ourselves as educators, not with a desire for computer-supported collaboration, but instead with computer-necessitated collaboration now being the norm.

Workshops were conducted with participants of the E&PDE conferences, and members of the Design Education Special Interest Group of the Design Society in 2020 and 2021. The first workshop took place in July 2020 with the aim to determine ‘what the challenges in the Design Education transition to online will be and how to overcome these. The outcomes of the workshop were: four key areas, 12 challenges and six solutions to these challenges. It was clear from this workshop that there were gaps in knowledge in terms of how to overcome challenges. Those involved in this transition did not believe the pandemic would have a huge impact on engineering design education and the community had little experience in taking emergency measures to get online quickly whilst still delivering high-quality material.

The second workshop took place in early September 2021 after the community had experienced one year of teaching fully online. This time, 19 challenges were identified and 16 solutions to these challenges. By comparing the outcomes of the workshops, we can better understand the gaps in knowledge of engineering design educators before and after the first year of online learning, and the innovative solutions created to overcome these challenges. This paper will share the engineering design practice changes reported by the participants of the workshops that will be useful to others who are developing online content.

A third workshop was conducted in late September 2021 developing upon the outcomes of the first and second workshops, in which participants were asked to take the challenges and solutions and to map these to a university timeline for students. This timeline proposes to support the planning of educational interventions to overcome common challenges and opportunities for online learning. The value of the timeline is in supporting others who are now engaged in online or hybrid learning, as a permanent change to their teaching practice, or as a framework, if a rapid change to fully online happens again.

The aim of this paper is to appraise the use of digital technologies in the teaching of design. The continuing growth of digital technology in industry is difficult to ignore with, for example, the growth of digital twins projected to reach $125 billion by 2030, so the inclusion of such technologies would clearly give currency to any mechanical engineering degree course.

The focus here is on the design teaching in undergraduate mechanical engineering courses at two universities, to compare and contrast usage of digital technologies. However, whilst such technologies equip students with skills that are valuable in industry, and therefore, also on placement, they need to be carefully planned into the teaching delivery. recent enrolments are on the increase, so cohorts are into the hundred which also has financial implications. Furthermore, the current design curriculum is already challenging for the cohort to meet, because whilst the new intake is typically analytically skilled it is less so in design and technology, and this creates a steep learning curve.

One of the current design group projects requires students to create a fully functioning mechanical assembly complete with CAD drawings, manufacturing data files and a bill of materials. So, this seems a natural place to consider digital technologies and how they how well they reflect in industrial practice particularly because the students’ machine is manufactured and assembled, and the manufacturing industry has high growth in this sector. That said, a wider view is proposed from a comparison across two universities teaching mechanical engineering design.

For the past century, cities evolved around car-centricity, where cars existed in uni-disciplinary isolation from urban planning in unchanging street layouts. Recently, urban planners and new paradigms are transitioning cities away from car-centrism to enable inter-modal streets for vehicles that exist today (e.g. bicycles, e-scooters, cars). Simultaneously, new types of vehicles are being designed for future cities, particularly in micromobility, which must be considered as new street layouts are designed. Therefore, new tools to communicate design concepts are required to ensure a multidisciplinary approach between mobility designers and urban planners.

In mobility design, to develop vehicle concepts, students traditionally use digital (CAD) and physical prototyping, with virtual and augmented reality (AR and VR) levels recently emerging. These design concept prototypes have different degrees of fidelity, lower early in the process (e.g. small-scale appearance models or full-scale functional mock-ups), while progressively becoming more faithful to the final design (e.g. full-scale appearance models), particularly when creating the final showcase of the design concept.

In academia, final mobility design showcases traditionally consist of vehicle-centric presentations where student designers prepare a verbal explanation, while audiences (usually other mobility designers) play a spectator role. The presentation consists of large posters and/or on-screen slide shows (including images, text, and animations), which can include a physical prototype (small-scale high-fidelity appearance model or low-fidelity full-scale mockup). Moreover, audiences are limited to 2D graphic and 3D physical off-scale representations of the vehicle concept with little context. After the presentation, they provide feedback, mostly addressing the vehicle’s design.

VR prototypes are emerging for final showcases in mobility design education and allow audiences to transition from spectators to active participants, capable of experiencing aspects of the concept like materiality, user-interactions, and urban context around the vehicle. However, the lack of physicality of this prototyping level can be disorienting because of issues with scale, position, and visibility of the real environment and people. Thus, the low-fidelity physical level is often preferred over the virtual, even when higher-fidelity aspects of the design and the urban context are lost. AR serves as a bridge where the physical mockup audience members are sitting on, matches the environment they can see and touch through the AR cameras, and has VR geometry and interactivity overlayed on top, essentially creating a multi-level prototype experience. This approach also allows mobility designers to showcase their vehicle solutions and planners to contextualize the built environment in a seamless transition between both disciplines.

Even though existing prototyping methodologies intend to bridge the physicality and virtuality of design concepts, none use the multi-level prototyping approach of AR (low-fidelity) in addition to VR (mid-fidelity) and 1:1 physical (low-fidelity) to showcase final design concepts to multidisciplinary stakeholders. This paper uses the case study of the final showcase of a Future Mobility Design Undergraduate studio focusing on micromobility. Two student micromobility concepts are demonstrated, and the findings are concluded based on the testimony of stakeholders in the AR/VR and urban development industries, who attended the event and tested the experience.

To develop the employees for the future we need to address the students of today. According to the World Economic Forum there are four types of skills that are needed for the jobs of tomorrow; problem-solving, self-management, how to work with people, and technology use and development. The Norwegian government states in the white paper “Education for restructuring – increased working relevance in higher education” (Meld. St. 16 (2020-2021)) that to prepare the students for the jobs of tomorrow the educational institutions need to decrease the gap between the academics and the industry. Consequently, the educational institutions need to increase the work relevance in the courses taught in the study programs.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) did a study in 2018 to investigate how students managed the transition from student to employee. The study concluded that Norwegian higher education prepared the students for the industry. However, the same report stated that the Norwegian higher education lacks work relevance in their study programs.

The white paper “Education for restructuring – increased working relevance in higher education” (Meld. St. 16 (2020-2021)) solely mentions internship as a work relevance, but also encourage study programs to find other ways of introducing work relevance in higher education. “Internship in Higher Education” points out challenges in implementing internship programs, such as diverse expectations, the required competencies to establish professional practice, inadequate resources from universities and students who struggle to secure a suitable internship experience. The Civil Engineering Department at the University of Agder have made various attempts to increase work relevance. Despite this, the students still rate the work relevance relatively low. Hence, this paper investigates what the students consider to be work relevant in their study, and what the students believe the study program could improve to better prepare them for the industry.

Two surveys were distributed in the beginning of October 2022 to all the bachelor and master students in Civil Engineering at the University of Agder: one for the bachelor students and one for the master students. The result from the surveys indicates that the students find many of the courses and the design of the lectures to be work relevant. In addition, they rated the various measures of work relevance in their study, such as normal lectures, exercises, exams, laboratory work, project work, internship, software, small talk with lecturers and fellow students, excursions, and guest lectures. The students rated the measures from 1, meaning highly irrelevant, to 5, highly relevant. As expected, internship scored most ratings of 5 (63%). However, when we included the scores 4 (relevant) and 5 (highly relevant), the measure that was rated highest by the students was not internship. Interestingly, excursions (88%), laboratory work (82%) and projects (81%) scored higher than internship (79%). Internship can be difficult to organise for some study programs as it usually involves a considerable degree of effort and time. These findings could help study programs to improve their work relevance without going to the extent of implementing internship.

Problem-based learning (PBL) is an “instructional (and curricular) learner-centered approach that empowers learners to conduct research, integrate theory and practice, and apply knowledge and skills to develop a viable solution to a defined problem”, in which students learn through “facilitated problem solving that centers on a complex problem that does not have a single correct answer”. Literature reports that it has profound implications on the motivations of the student to learn, and can be widely used to support several domains, as it is known to help develop various top skills, such as, critical thinking, complex problem- solving, self-learning, collaboration and communication skills, necessary for young graduates to be industry-ready and responsible innovators.

This paper investigates the current undergraduate education scenario – at the global and local level, through secondary and primary research, and highlights the policies and challenges in the face of implementation of the same, due to varied structure of autonomy, as well as resource availability, which is a big constraint in the region.

Technical education offered by South Asian Universities, particularly at undergraduate level, remains didactic, teacher-centric and contextually disconnected from the issues and challenges of the region, in turn, making the fresh graduates poor in skills needed to be industry-ready. In addition, the members of faculty too, struggle with inculcating real-world issues and problems into practical experiences for students due to course loads, lesson plans and lack of training in more appropriate pedagogical approaches. However, the region recognizes the need to bring in reform into the current education system, and countries like, India, Nepal and Bhutan are in a transformative phase; trying to imbibe creativity and competence while instilling cultural identity and sensitization to sustainable development goals (SDGs), through their new education policies. Problem based Learning (PBL) is one such approach, and has been reported to develop various top skills, as identified by the World Economic Forum.

The practice of finding and solving ‘wicked’ problems, i.e., real-world, complex, and uncertain; creatively, so as to have a positive social impact has always been a designerly pursuit, and the key contribution of this paper is to showcase how Design Thinking can be used as a strategy to inculcate PBL into undergraduate education. A collated view of the PBL process, with stages, defined roles, and general guidelines for problem formulation is proposed; based on the empirical findings, from several case studies and workshops, that the South Asian universities require resources that help in practical implementation of the approach. This paper also presents a literature review on the historical development of PBL pedagogy; its definitions, characteristics and learning approaches; comparison with other approaches, such as, project-based and case-based, and its effectiveness in terms of measures and metrices; and discusses the classification of ‘problems’, its types and attributes, and the importance of identification and formulation of the ‘right’ problem to have the right impact with respect to SDGs.

Presently, the same is being compiled into a handbook for easy reference and dissemination, and future works entail the evaluation of its effectiveness.

In a collaboration between the University of XX and the YY University of Applied Sciences we explore ethics education from a tool-based, practical perspective. In this ongoing project we focus on the question if and how practical tools for ethical deliberation on the impact of technology can be helpful in ethics education for engineering students. To adhere to the practical perspective, the approach uses a focus on the impact of technology as a way toward ethical deliberation. The idea is that engineering students should actively take the probable, desirable ánd possibly unwanted effects of their designs into account during the development of their projects.

To foster this process we have the desire to build an ethics lab, analogous to an engineering lab or a design studio. As part of this ethics lab two students of the bachelor Creative Technology have designed an interactive installation to let the visitors of our lab experience classical ethical dilemmas in a contemporary manner.

This paper will present the installations -representing Plato’s cave and the Panopticon- as well as our first experiences with “teaching ethics through interactive installations”.

Final degree shows are often described as a ‘culmination’ – a climax or completion. Is the academy missing an opportunity with this perspective? This paper calls into question the role of final degree shows, exploring the potential for them to stimulate pedagogical and curricular development within a design programme or design school.

There are increasing pressures on universities to engage in socially relevant research and nurture students able to respond to the grand challenges of the modern world. To ensure relevance, the academy must learn with the communities it serves. Whilst much research exists on different forms of collaboration with universities, this position paper responds to a gap in literature regarding the role of public exhibitions and proposes final degree shows as a space for new models of public discourse, providing opportunities for knowledge exchange and stimulating discussion with communities outside of academia in different contexts. Rather than being the end of a conversation, we propose that final degree shows become an invitation to begin.

Using a single case study methodology we describe a snapshot safari activity, held during a final degree show, highlighting key outcomes, and exploring the insights revealed in terms of design teaching and curricula. The paper concludes by proposing models of micro-engagement within the context of a final degree show. We believe these could form the basis of further research in this area giving universities the opportunity to explore specific areas of interest through thematic curation of exhibitions with considered convening of people to discuss them.

Hand disability, which could be considered as a part of the physical disability, is not only described as the person who lost one of their hands or arm when they have born or encountered an accident but also noticed someone whose one of their hand malfunctioned, like hemiplegic stroke patients. Those disabilities faced are not only physical issues, like mobility and dexterity, during their daily life, but also have the challenge of biopsychosocial approach and social exclusion due to the aspect of appearance and capability. Those external challenges would trigger the problem of low self-esteem and discrimination to them and influence their mental and social statements negatively. In fact, the employment rate of physical disability among the population of whole disabled persons is only 4.4% in Hong Kong, compared to the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) persons, with nearly 8 times difference (HKSAR Census and Statistics Department, 2008).

To analyse the pain point and opportunity of the one-hand disabled, and understand the life experience and emotion of the one-hand person, testing and interview has been conducted in this research respectively. For testing, daily activities which have a high frequency of applying two hands with generating more force and dexterity action would be experienced because loss of strength and dexterity is also a major issue for physical disability because of the loss of muscle activity (Canning et al. 2004). The experiment showed that activities, which involved the moving of objects and plenty of steps, would take longer time for the one-hand users and have lower performance than a normal person. For interviewing, two people in Hong Kong, who were between the age of 40 and 65, with a one-hand disablement problem consented to participate in the study. Although an adaptation of one-hand activity and time consumption is a major issue for one-hand users, both participants would like to cope with the challenge by themselves independently and have a housework habit.

Confidence and the capability by using a single hand is the major pain point for one-hand disability. Since cooking is a high complexity housework for them, particularly Asian cooking which contained plenty of action, like steaming and poaching soup, providing a design which could assist them to learn and cope with those difficult processes independently as a normal person does not only increase the effectiveness but also could build up their positive attitude because housework could provide a message that “ they could do it without assist” and those hand disabilities could demonstrate their own value and support to their family by themselves.

In a course on sustainable design strategies, students explore different notions of what it means to be sustainable and what that, in turn, implies for how one should design. As I believe that many of the philosophical notions (such as Circular Economy, Cradle 2 Cradle, and biomimicry) that have been proposed, and the tools and methods that associate them, still have many shortcomings, I deliberately set up my students for failure. By handing in that failure

In this course we set out to understand how different perspectives on sustainability differ from each other, how they are currently operationalised in tools and methods, and –most importantly– what limitations those perspectives, tools and methods have. I could lecture about this of course, and talk about many cases, each with their own particular hurdles, but I deem it more educational for students to bump into, or trip over such hurdles themselves. Enter the notion of annotated failure.

In a 10 week course, we start with jointly reading some basic texts (such as Fabrizio Ceschin and İdil Gaziulusoy's "Evolution of design for sustainability: From product design to design for system innovations and transitions"), after which students select their own focus. After several years, I see Biomimicry and Design Justice as two very popular focal points in our program. Students continue reading individually for a couple of weeks, to familiarise themselves with the philosophical notion of their chosen strategy, and the methods and tools that have been developed for them. this focussed reading material is selected with the help of the instructor. Subsequently, they try out their focal sustainable strategy on a very small design project (on which they spent roughly 8 working days). But here is the thing: they are not asked to deliver a finished design. Instead they are required to submit an annotated design process up to the point where they got stuck. So, the deliverable is not the usual final design, but rather an annotated failure. Students find this very challenging ("You know I'm gonna ask you five more times, right?"), because they feel it means that they themselves have failed, instead of the sustainable strategy, method or tool they employed, which is actually coming up short.

The notion of annotated failure as the course deliverable was to some extent a consequence of allotting sufficient time for reading in the beginning of the course, and the limitation of having only 6 credit points. Reading previous research consists of about a 100 pages per week for the first weeks. This reading yields much deeper insight than if I were to select a single design for sustainability manual as course literature. However, in hindsight, I feel the notion of annotated failure turned out as a valuable educational model. There are of course links to the notion of productive failure, but it is different in the sense that it is the final deliverable and not a step towards finding a final design.

Unprecedented extreme climate emergencies are becoming part of everyday conversations and experiences. As students seek how to design for these challenges, design educators need to enhance learning in the area of *habitability in extreme environments. Author Solnit defines emergency as “separation from the familiar, a sudden emergence into a new atmosphere” (p.x, 2009). The authors’ experience in extremes and habitability* inform design education projects for unfamiliar, remote settings, where the challenge is inaccessibility to real end users and real-time conditions. This is a case study of a habitat designed and prototyped by a student team in one location, installed and inhabited in a remote setting by analogue (where one situation is intended to simulate another; a common approach in space architecture) astronauts. (*design of suitable living conditions/life support systems).

Project Design briefs invite students to frame a problem to generate and test prototypes to an expected final state, leading them to develop skills, confidence and competencies. For the case study described, the full-scale prototype was installed in a remote lava tube (representing a subsurface cave on the moon) and used by two crews during two missions. Extreme contexts can captivate students and lead to spectacular concepts. While this project’s success was the development of a prototype, the habitability experience was problematic. Post-mission reporting cites the success of a design but not its crew's experience, therefore the authors offer recommendations for extended learning to future-enable design education through field-relevant skills, socially meaningful competencies and resilient contextual solutions.

Students not always enjoy an in-depth practical learning experience with an adequate portion of hands-on during their academic education. In many fields of study, traditional laboratories are common learning spaces that are, however, not accessible 24/7 and, the practical work is mostly pre-defined by the lecturer, resulting in a short and very “passive” active learning. To overcome this limitation and to provide a broader availability and to foster individual learning experience, we aim to transform this analog world into a modern learning and teaching environment using digital technologies and a corresponding digital framework for courses and laboratories.

An existing laboratory on prototyping from our university’s bachelor program on sustainable engineering with an extensive machine park consisting of 3D printers, milling machines, lasers and various hand tools is digitized and will finally be linked with the real-world lab.

In addition to digitizing the basic process of product development and prototyping as part of students' project works, all additional activities arising in the lab are also transferred from the analog to the digital world. This digitalization is implemented alongside the already existing (partly browser-based) software tools of the individual devices in the e-learning platform Moodle. This results in a digital copy of the lab, its equipment and defined processes – structured in accordance with the established proceedings on product development (such as Pahl/Beitz and VDI 2221). We consider it a digital twin of the work and learning environment, calling it the “digital learning environment twin” of the real-world lab.

For the product development process, a course area is available in Moodle with various feedback loops and assessment levels for the individual development steps of the student projects. Through this, students can submit their project plans, design ideas, sketches, CAD-models, manufacturing codes (such as G-codes for 3D printers, laser cutters and carving machines), or “just” request feedback and initiate meetings on technical and/or organizational topics of their product design process, the lab equipment, etc. Also, a safety instruction with instructional videos, PDF documents with hazard warnings and operating instructions as well as a final test (to allow operating the lab equipment) are provided to introduce the students to the lab.

In this paper, we will illustrate the overall methodological approach on the established digital learning environment twin of the lab. Furthermore, we will have a detailed view on the challenge of transferring underlying manufacturing process to the digital world and linking them to provide a continuous digital workflow. The paper will be closed with an analysis of feedback (by both students and lecturers) on the pros and cons as well as on the usability of the digital twin of the lab.

Professional identity and vision (PIV) development is important for students to shape their educational path and future careers. Students need guidance to transition from their university work into working life [3]. Especially for Industrial Design (ID) students, it is important to define who they are and want to be as designers. These students need to be prepared for a professional career working in a field with varying perspectives regarding emergent technologies and the role of designers.

Recognizing this need, Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) provides students with guidance on their PIV development. This guidance mainly takes the form of seminars which include supervised group discussions and students writing PIV documents. However, many students still struggle defining and writing their PIV. One way to facilitate students developing their PIV is externalizing and analyzing their underlying mental models. This uncovering of mental models can be done by expressing these models through tangible visual prostheses [1].

To supplement the mainly textual approach now offered in the seminars, we explored how an adapted Thinking with Things (TWT) toolkit [2] can help ID students in their PIV development and reflection. This toolkit makes use of visual prostheses to assist people in externalizing mental models. The usage of the TWT toolkit for PIV development involves groups of students working together with various tangible materials to construct a physical three-dimensional landscape representing elements of their identity and vision as well as any connections between these elements.

Two case studies were conducted to observe the use of the toolkit. The first case study involved first-year bachelor students of ID and the second involved bachelor students of ID approaching graduation. Data collection was done through an adapted professional identity scale supplemented by a semi-structured interview, together aiming to cover students’ usage of the toolkit itself (e.g., material properties, projection of meaning on objects) as well as the takeaways they gained from it (reflection on current PIV, relating to peers, development of new PIV insights).

We conclude that our adapted TWT toolkit is more suitable for students approaching their final bachelor graduation project and those beyond this stage in their degree, and that the main use of the toolkit lies in its reflective nature. First-year students’ challenges with their PIV did not primarily concern expressing or visualizing their mental models, but rather that they did not yet have sufficient experiences to build mental models around, and as a result had little to share or reflect on. (Upcoming) graduate students generally displayed a deeper understanding of the field and their role in it, but some still struggled to fully express or externalize this position using conventional methods, such as reflective writing.

As a result of this study, the TU/e has integrated the TWT workshops for developing students’ PIV into its 23-24 curriculum.

References: https://pastebin.com/VMTKeEtm

By its very nature, education is a moving practice. As new theories, practices, technologies and evidence emerges, all educators have a responsibility to ensure their teaching is at the forefront of their subject and specialism. However, many of the foundational learning skills are taken for granted as being taught and embedded in the earlier years of education. The traditional ‘reading, writing and arithmetic’ of old has been replaced with a much wider suite of skills, but as our world changes with the climate emergency, there are new learning paradigms that are essential to the growing learner and engaged human.

The circular economy is one such element. A system that aims to keep materials and resources in constant flow, whilst also creating a regenerative future is arguably a critical system to be understood – and practiced in a variety of ways – by the youngest of learners as a foundational piece of education.

This paper looks at two case studies – firstly, the authors new pilot study of how circularity can be embedded earlier in the education landscape through the creation of a 10-week online city-wide education platform working with schools from all key stages and also how circularity has been embedded over the last few years in a BSc / BA Product Design Degree, (and the graduate results this has created).

By looking at how circularity can be embedded earlier in the curriculum as a core skill and language, the aim is to discuss how higher education can then push the progression and practice of circularity in each specialism and help the acceleration towards a regenerative future. How might our courses change if we were working with more prepared students?

Our material world and consumer habits have a significant negative impact in the environment. Across its life cycle the average product results in carbon emissions of 6.3 times its own weight (1). Designers are starting to experiment and develop biomaterials from waste or generate renewable growable materials rather than extracting and mining.

New materials developed from mycelium, bacteria, algae, and cactus help to reduce the environmental impact of single use and to rethink our relationship with convenience and consumption. These materials offer some of the insulating, lightweight, waterproof, and transparent properties of plastic, but are non-toxic and compostable. Moreover, these materials often use bio fabrication techniques, instead of traditional manufacture processes by harnessing biological organisms to design and grow products and clothing.

Truly regenerative design considers interconnected dynamics that are people and planet centred with a focus on circular economy and regeneration. Material Futures used biomaterials and bio fabrication to introduce regenerative design principles to second year Product Design students towards a co evolutionary process between humans and natural systems, understanding local context and a living system thinking approach. Students were asked to design a product made entirely of mycelium that considered user needs whilst helping to decarbonise the material world. Design methods such as cone of futures, future backing and the thing of the future were used so students had to consider the micro and macro impact of their proposals. The project was supported by a regenerative design lab through a workshop format in which students had the opportunity to learn mycelium’s bio fabrication processes and properties. The paper includes examples of experiments with mycelium, the methods used to develop concepts and student feedback that illustrates the importance of introducing regenerative design principles to increase ecoliteracy and consequently reduce the environmental impact of product design.

1. Meinrenken, C.J., Chen, D., Esparza, R.A. et al. Carbon emissions embodied in product value chains and the role of Life Cycle Assessment in curbing them. Sci Rep 10, 6184 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-62030-x

Innovation of didactic is an increasingly strategic goal for universities to equip students with the right competencies for modern and complex challenges and for continuously changing working contexts. Universities need to cope both with preparing learners for jobs that still don’t exist and be competitive towards emerging players in the context of education and training. The label “innovative didactic” generally refers to the idea of a cultural and epistemological transformation that has the potential to change the teaching and learning models. Specifically, the innovation of the instructional design approach suggests moving from the conventional ex-cathedra lectures to a more active involvement of students in the learning process. Indeed, the concept that innovation in didactics only relates to digital technologies is limited. In fact, the research in this field aims, more broadly, to experiment with new educational practices and methodologies that relate pedagogy, space, and technologies and reflect on the synergies of the different elements. Lately, the pandemic and digital transformation are two of the main issues that have pushed the discussion around this topic. On one hand, the sudden restrictions in the context of didactic imposed by COVID-19 oriented the research toward strategies to cope also with distance education. On the other hand, digital transformation has transversally affected learning and teaching settings for over two decades.

The design discipline has always pursued experimentation in its didactics and by nature design-based learning often offers a teaching setting, such as studio-based classes, which places the students with an active role at the centre of the learning process. Examples of these innovative teaching practices might be found in design literature, but there is a lack of extensive studies on how the teaching innovation process is being handled and tracked by design schools.

The paper illustrates a funded research project, [project name], aimed at investigating the perimeter of innovation in design education. The research focuses on the situated context of [university] to comprehend how experimentation in university courses can lead to the innovation of design didactics. The paper presents the results of two research activities: a survey that has been sent to all the lecturers at the School of Design of [university], which aimed to map the experimental practices in the courses in the last decade and two sets of interviews. One set, as a follow-up of the practices collected, and the second set, to relevant actors in the didactic organization to comprehend how the ecosystem can enable these experimentations.

The data collected disclosed that various experimentations are currently running in our context, and they could contribute to understanding how design teaching and learning are recently evolving. Moreover, the interviews have been designed with a semi-structured protocol to foster teachers' narratives of their experimental practices. In conclusion, the investigation developed in our situated context contributes to the discussion of understanding how experimentation in design courses can bring the innovation of didactic. Hence, it provides a series of protocols that might be used in other contexts to expand the scope of the research.

Designing for disability is a very specialised area where designers need to consider parameters that make the intervention socially inclusive, functionally impactful, user-friendly, and widely acceptable. Assistive devices and technologies play a very prominent role in the rehabilitation of people with disabilities. Using these in concurrence with the available treatment procedures helps people with disabilities in achieving independent living. However, designing assistive devices for children with special needs is a challenge, particularly since these users are incapable of providing adequate feedback concerning usability, usefulness, etc. This requires a holistic approach to address the nuances that contemplate the growth of the child, attributes that cater to their daily routine, emotional factors, social interactions, etc.

This paper investigates the adoption of the participatory co-design approach with multi-users involved in the rehabilitation of children with special needs, such as the rehabilitation centre, the therapist, the special educator, and the parent, beyond the child. A customizable assistive device for training children in various motor skills considering the native context, abilities, and needs of children, was designed and tested as a part of this study. This work showcases how the participation of the rehabilitation centre rather, than just one stakeholder, influenced the design intervention. Other than eliciting requirements and affirming the needs of children, feedback on the prototype from multiple users and stakeholders of the rehabilitation centre proved to have high coherence, as they have a common understanding of the target audience.

There have been increasingly significant efforts in exploring various design approaches for user-centric designs. Participatory, user-in-the-loop, co-design, customer-centered design, etc. are undertaken by multiple research groups, and evidence has been gathered from the literature to prove that the resultant design effectively brings out users as the key focus. Along with the inclusion of end users, there have been studies where multiple users and other stakeholders are involved in different facets of the design. While several avenues in robotics, game design, etc. have been ventured using co-design approaches, the design of assistive devices in resource-constraint settings for children with special needs is a relatively less explored territory.

The benefits of extending the co-design approach, from only an individual, i.e., the user to multiple users, i.e., the entire institute, is empirically found in this paper. This approach paved the way for exploring scenarios where the device could be extended to other users or target groups and understanding new requirements from these groups within the same system. This work highlights how building a strong foundation between the institute and the design group can impact the design process and act as a platform to undertake the design of several other interventions in the future, and outlines a different take on the participatory-codesign approach in designing assistive devices for children with special needs in resource-constraint settings, as an exemplar for building collaborations at a systematic or institutional level rather than at the individual level. This ‘multi-user-centric design’ approach as an extension of the ‘user-centric design’ could be leveraged by different communities in designing solutions for special needs.

The state of equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in the engineering industry is troubling. The UK has the lowest proportion of female engineers in Europe at just 8%. The Royal Academy of Engineering reports that although 26% of engineering students identify as BAME, only 6% of professional engineers are non-white. This paper will detail the creation of a module in the Mechanical Engineering course at Imperial College, designed to systemically improve EDI in the engineering industry by empowering students taking the module to become champions for EDI.

Galvanised by the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, a group of students from the Mechanical Engineering Department at Imperial College wrote an open letter in their university’s newspaper inviting their department to adopt several specific EDI-improvement measures. The ensuing discourse between staff and students led three students to propose a summer research project, with the goal of designing an elective module focused entirely on EDI in engineering for undergraduate students taking the course.

While UK chartership competencies specifically require engineers to understand diversity and equality issues, many students, including those who designed the module, felt the industry lacked sufficient understanding of EDI and dialogue surrounding these issues. Therefore, this module aimed to fill this gap in engineering education and empower students to affect change as graduates in the engineering sector.

The initial module design was developed through liaising with academics with relevant experience in EDI, outreach charities and relevant teams within Imperial. The aims of the module were to encourage students to think in the context of global society, develop an appreciation for EDI issues, and gain practical experience in initiative coordination to improve EDI in engineering. Students would be introduced to the key issues related to EDI through seminars delivered primarily by expert guest lecturers in the autumn term, and in the spring term, use their knowledge to design an initiative to improve an identified EDI issue within a chosen workplace or institution. Students would also keep a logbook, recording their learning using reflective practice. The module was designed to be completely coursework based.

The student project laid the groundwork and justification for such a module to be added to the curriculum. The implementation of the module into the curriculum required a few modifications to the initial proposal for logistical, financial, and pedagogical reasons, including removing the requirement for students taking the module to action the initiatives they design, ensuring grades were not dependent on external parties.

Although several other departments and institutions have created modules attempting to address EDI issues through societal engagement, this module’s concerted focus on empowering students to become EDI champions in engineering makes it one of the first of its kind offered as part of an engineering degree in the UK. By detailing the process of creating this module at this conference, we hope to inspire and serve as a springboard for the creation of similar modules in other university engineering courses.

This paper discusses how MATLAB software was integrated into the research and design process by capturing and visualising data to inform a 4th-year capstone undergraduate industrial design product development project. Examined within the project framework are perspectives on; data use for design projects from the literature, data collection, understanding project data, designer alternate skill set, using data to justify design direction, associated data capture technologies, data-driven changes of state for UIs (User Interface), and a proposal that designers need to have a data practice paradigm. As technology rapidly embeds into almost every aspect of society, data is produced and captured at a diversity and scale previously unparalleled. Tools and systems to capture and assess such data simultaneously are being democratised, bringing new understandings, and accessibility to systems for testing hypotheses more efficiently, either with sensor-based open-source hardware microprocessors or commercial data-capturing systems. Designers developing smart products, smart system proposals, and IoT devices need to integrate these data capture and assessment tools into traditional product development and research processes. This is especially significant in projects where subtle technical innovation and application of new technologies, “technology epiphanies”[9], or natural user interfaces (NUI) are present. These themes are critical to designers at present; engineers, data scientists, and computing scientists apply data analysis techniques to design problems previously in the product designer’s training skillset. Having an applied understanding of such processes would permit designers to regain control over domains slipping into the grasp of allied product development disciplines.

Although Design thinking originated as a process to solve wicked problems such as environmental issues and inequality (Rittel and Webber, 1973; Buchanan, 1992), the approach tends to focus on a conventional linear growth paradigm rather than a sustainable transition with nature at the core.

Design thinking arose in a time (mid 90s - 00s) when climate and environment did not receive the same attention as in recent years. We believe that Design thinking still has its justification as a process tool, however, the authors are convinced that the tool can be strengthened if we focus more on materials and early use of prototyping, and if the process is supplemented with a consistent focus on natural interdependencies and systems thinking. We will address and discuss this as a perspective to re-balance the Design thinking process in the current context, where natural recovery and green transition should be highest priority. Design thinking emphasizes research as the first step of defining a relevant problem. This can typically be in the form of ‘empathizing’ (Ideo, Stanford), ‘discovering’ (Double Diamond, British Design Council) or ‘finding’ (5F, VIA University College). That is, with a human-centered focus. In this paper, we discuss ways in which systems thinking can serve as an entrance point to a re-balanced Design thinking process model with nature in the center.

In two projects we have employed systems thinking at different phases in the design thinking process. One project has used systems thinking throughout the whole process with an intensified focus on the solution. The other project has used system thinking specifically in the initial phases to find and re-frame the problem through system mapping. The focus in the paper is to evaluate in which ways and to what extent system thinking has contributed to the process.

In this paper we use interviews with participating students from both projects as a foundation for our discussions. The projects are respectively an internal project with local students and an external project with multiple international partner universities and students. We present the two projects, the participating students, and the partners involved together with the insights from the interviews.

The local project Design for Change is a three-week project with 48 students from the 5th semester specialty ‘Entrepreneurship and Innovation’. The GPA Map the System is a 10-week long learning experience offered in collaboration between Humber College, Otago Polytechnic and VIA University College for students to build key competencies for sustainable development (Rieckmann, Mindt and Gardiner, 2017) through activities focused on systems thinking and mapping.

Systems thinking allows us to reorient our thinking from being entity-focused (a product, a local problem, a specific person) to include multiple entities (products and services, multiple problems, multiple stakeholders), their interrelations, the dynamics of the system, and very importantly the different scales of the system (Hunt, 2020)

Based on the insights from the two projects, this paper discuss the didactic approaches to system thinking, the potentials and challenges in connecting it to design thinking processes and summarize with recommendations.

Students of today should learn and see a need for change and recognize the importance of a shift towards a more sustainable business world, design and engineering is an important piece of this equation. The phenomenon of design and engineering is claimed to be in the complex domain. In the complex domain long term plans are not predictable and the methods used to lead this process should be agile and cope with the emergent nature of the phenomenon. Short sprints pulled from a backlog is one of these methods and could therefore be argued to be relevant for teaching design and engineering students. In attempt to learn and practice this method the teaching of UiA’s design and engineering course at master level is using this method directly in the teaching. Combined with the principle of “one piece flow” the students must every week prepare homework for their class, then followed by a relevant classroom teaching and ending the day with a 3-hour graded sprint. The sprints are done either as an individual task or as a group task, depending on the learning objective. The students report about less waste and higher learning effect an impression also shared by the teachers. Let us sprint toward a sustainable future.

During the pandemic, the use of remote laboratories helped maintain academic quality in the areas of Engineering and Science at universities around the world. At Tecnologico de Monterrey, we tried to go further using virtual, augmented, and immersive reality to give continuity to learning through the creation of digital twins during the confinement by COVID-19, and now that we have returned to strengthen the learning of complex lessons,

Using simulators replicating a manufacturing plant's operations allows students to better understand the transactions and generation of data formed by simulating the behavior during a determined period of demand. Gamifying the mixed reality lessons and simulators has allowed us to take learning to a high level of immersion on the part of the students.

During distance learning, it was not easy to control the correct use of devices to avoid student distraction, now with the return to school, the use of these technologies allows not only an almost total immersion and increase in learning but also the development of graduation competencies not only of the students but also beyond the university.

A key element of learning in the TEC21 model is the challenge posed by a training partner, but one of the restrictions is the time they dedicate to us and the accessibility to their processes. Through these technologies, digital twins are being created that allow students immersive learning of the processes of the training partners and, for them, the current analysis of their processes and training of new personnel.

This document reflects the learning by designing, developing, and implementing mixed reality lessons, simulators, and gamification from August 2020 to date for the development of student learning in the TEC21 model.

Names used to describe the people our design projects are intended for are both stabilised and questionable. Human-Centred and User-Centred approaches are still at the core of design activity, but should we be talking about humans and users? These terms originated over thirty years ago in design methodology, but are still default terms in much of design methodology and teaching. Equally while UX/UI are commonly used abbreviations, some companies have dropped the notion of “user” experience design, to return to the term ‘product design’. Predating ‘users’, in the 1950s Henry Dreyfuss used the term ‘people’ for those he was designing for, and ‘people’ may be returning for want of a better alternative.

Designers today understand that their methodology can be applied to ever-wider problems, therefore it seems relevant to continue to question which words should be used to refer to the ‘people' who are at the centre of design’s focus. While a wide range of possible words exist in English, from users to actors, adopters, customers, stake-holders, participants and beneficiaries, to name but a few, each one can potentially influence and perhaps limit the way these people are considered, perceived and are present in a design process. Equally these different terms relate to different levels of participation by the people concerned by the design project, whereas today’s design process (particularly in all strands of design for sustainability) requires a social focus, giving a much more central role to the people concerned by design interventions.

This paper discusses chronologies of accepted terminology for different people involved in design processes and highlights recent evolutions and debates around certain words. Factors that may lead to the emergence or replacement of certain terms are explored (for example; perceived links to aspects of methodology that may no longer be seen as contemporary, or inversely to emerging strands of methodology). In the context of increasingly multi-disciplinary approaches addressing today's complex problems, it is also relevant to question which terms can be shared (and readily understood) in domains beyond design. Equally while design may tend to adopt English language terminology, there are clearly valuable insights that can be gained from terminology used in other languages.

Based on a literature review but also on interviews with designers, design students and design educators of different nationalities and specialisations we highlight the terminology most commonly used and also the parts of the terminology that appear to generate problems. While it would not be possible to be exhaustive in the exploration of terminology beyond the English language, we discuss certain examples that appear to be valuable.

The aim of this discussion paper is to confront ambiguities, and encourage considering the most relevant terms for more respectful, responsible language use in our evolving design process. Questioning the most relevant ways of (re)naming the people at the heart of design methodology has important ethical implications and is particularly relevant in the context of design education, influencing the status given to people involved in future design activity.

Design students are well-versed in standard linear presentations: moving from slide A to B to C in a predefined order. However, they are unpracticed in non-linear storytelling in the classroom, a method that allows for narrative flexibility. This paper explores the impact of linear and non-linear presentation methods using linear and non-linear presentation software Canva and Figma in a Design History course. Eighteen design students from gaming, user experience, graphic, and industrial design disciplines participated in the study. Students presented twice using Canva and twice using Figma. They were encouraged to experiment with linear and non-linear methods of presenting to the class, and for a fifth collaborative presentation, they could choose either tool to present with.

Results indicate that Figma had a steeper learning curve than Canva; however, its non-linear structure effectively engaged the audience, increased their knowledge retention, and improved opinions of team presentations over Canva's linear structure. When asked which presentation tool to use in next year's course, 50% said Figma, 11.2% said Canva, and 38.9% said both. Disrupting the current linear based standards for design presentation tools, like Canva, Adobe or PowerPoint type products, with non-linear methods with tools like Figma enhances student learning experiences. Students also preferred presenting alongside a partner, enabling increased discussion of details and deeper exploration into critical aspects of the designer's lives.

Industrial designers use several kinds of representations to support reflection-in-action while developing design proposals. The affordances provided by digital tools impact the flow of shifting between different representations, thus influencing the ability for reflection and discussion. This fact challenges learning designers who need to plan industrial design courses in digital learning environments.

This paper addresses planning a product design morphology course delivered in a digital learning environment in the context of problem-based learning. The study reflects upon the externalisation of knowledge and how it impacts the matching between educational goals and the affordances of digital tools. The study reflects on the planning process, in particular on the relationship between designing active learning experiences with conscious considerations of specific affordances provided by digital tools. A reflection following the course delivery revisits the planning process. By examining the robustness of the course in relation to the initial goals and in regard to enabling self-directed learning, it proposes steps to improve the planning process by considering the affordances of digital tools in online learning environments.

This paper draws parallels and contrasts between the Design-focussed learning tracks of the Mechanical Engineering courses at Imperial College London (ICL) and Nottingham Trent University (NTU). These two institutions have historically had a different focus and vision.

The ICL Mechanical Engineering course has a strong emphasis on theoretical and mathematical foundations. Objectives of the Design modules are to integrate the knowledge obtained in the theoretical modules and to bring this theoretical knowledge into practice. Additionally, the students achieve competence in the applied aspects of Design and Manufacture, including engineering drawing, standards, design processes and methodologies, and workshop skills. In addition skills such as teamwork, project and time management and budgeting are trained. The objective is to develop mechanical engineers who combine a strong foundation, analytical skills and the ability to utilise their knowledge to develop innovative products.

At NTU design teaching is approached as a tool to encourage creativity across disciplines, within the themes of sustainability and robust product development. All engineering courses (Sport, Biomedical, Mechanical and Electrical & Electronics Engineering) undergo the same design and manufacturing module with the aim to produce well-rounded engineers who have specialism within their own discipline and have acquired skills and knowledge in areas that are considered slightly outside their domain of study. The objective is to remove inter-disciplinary barriers and silos with the appreciation that problems of the present and future require pragmatic solutions from creative problem-solvers who are not limited by their disciplines of study.

Key differences in approach include

ICL

- Mechanical Engineering only

- Mech Eng undergoes specific D&M courses

- Focus on including engineering drawing, sketching and CAD, engineering standards, design processes and methods as well as obtaining competence in conventional and CNC machining and workshop skills

- Evolution from individual work in year 1 to group work in year 2 and multi-level supergroups in year 3

- Project-enhanced learning to apply and broaden didactic teaching

D&M modules culminate in a 20 ECTS Design-Make-Test project in year 3 where several groups of 4 students collaborate in a so-called superproject

- Focus is on engineering design problems with a real client, external suppliers and planning and budget responsibility. Projects are application or research driven and aim to utilise theoretical knowledge, also from year 3 elective modules

NTU

- Different engineering courses follow the same D&M modules

- All courses undergo the modules, encouraging inter-disciplinarity

- Strong focus on Design processes and methods. Manufacturing is only demonstrated (students don’t actually use any machines), Workshop skills acquired through project-based learning and manufacturing demonstrations , Some focus on drawings

- Recurrent themes of group working and collaborative learning

- Primarily project-based learning with very little didactic teaching

- D&M modules are a build up to a 3- week long Grand Challenge where 1st year students team up with 2nd year students (mixed discipline) to solve a current engineering problem (wireless networking, sustainable development, energy harvesting, etc.) aims are to encourage working in mix teams, across disciplines and year of study

This analysis aids towards creating an engineering design education framework aimed at selecting appropriate student-focused pedagogies.

Design education has a nuanced relationship with examples. Although they are considered useful teaching tools, their use is often restricted to illustrating the design theories and principles around which the curriculum is structured. In contrast, professional designers view examples as autonomous entities and use them to initiate a critical dialogue with their current problem space. Therefore, students must cultivate their own repertoire of solutions and learn to initiate conversations between existing solutions and design challenges, to gain a better understanding of the problem space and to generate new designs. Design curricula should accommodate those processes. This paper outlines an experiment conducted with master’s students in Applied Data Science at Utrecht University, who took a course focused on designing recommender system interfaces. The students were provided with a set of solutions of recommender interface designs as their main instruction tool. They could use this set to curate their own solution repertoire, resulting from their critical conversations between the potential solutions and their design challenges. As a result, overall, participants' work displayed more diverse designs, and they used designs patterns more flexibly. Based on this case study, we tentatively conclude that a design curriculum built around examples, complemented by theories, is advantageous, as long as special attention is given to helping students initiate fruitful iterations between their challenges and a set of solutions

Competence-based learning is oriented to learning by the implementation of challenges where students must demonstrate that they have learned and generated knowledge through the development of applied skills.

Design education has been significantly transformed in the last ten years thanks to the integration of new perspectives and the search for a more sustainable and resilient vision due to the great impact that the discipline has had on environmental issues in the past.

With the need to renew the curriculum on a competency-based approach and outlining the visions oriented towards a sustainable future, this paper describes the process of curricular design that has been followed for more than five years to materialize in a proposal of the Design program with a strategic and emerging perspective concerning social innovation and the regeneration of the planet.

This paper presents the use of the Design Competency Assessment (DesCA) framework to enhance collaboration between courses in an interdisciplinary design-based curriculum at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). The paper illustrates the use of this framework in SUTD’s second term Design Thinking Project (DTP). DTP explicitly bringing together the learnings of the courses taking place in that term, in particular the introductory Design Thinking and Innovation (DTI) course. DTP as a joint project is facilitated by faculty from different disciplines. Students have to demonstrate how different disciplines have influenced their design project. DesCA was introduced in the planning of the project to identify competencies needed for DTP and overlay these onto the existing course schedule. The results of this case study suggests that DesCA, as a competency-based approach, provides a common language between faculty of different disciplines and is an effective means: to gain a common understanding of the required competencies; to obtain coherence between courses in an interdisciplinary curriculum; and to form the basis for assessment. This should allow for a more coherent and integrated approach to design education, which is essential for producing graduates with a broad range of knowledge and skills and attitudes to tackle complex global challenges.

A new narrative and approach to address the unprecedented challenges faced by society on a global scale is urgently needed. The concept of sustainability is deemed inadequate, and a shift towards regenerative design and development processes is proposed. Regenerative Design (RD) is presented as a systemic and ecological action that seeks to co-evolve with nature and reverse the degeneration of the earth's natural systems. The article proposes a new interdisciplinary engineering and design education program from a regenerative approach at Tecnologico de Monterrey, which involves community participation, ethnographic tools, and design charrettes. The program, in a minor degree format, aims to co-design human structures and systems that can co-evolve with living systems, value the relationship between human systems and the natural ecosystem, and create positive and abundant futures. Success cases are presented to exemplify the application of the methodology.

Purpose:

Sustainability transitions are not hindered by technological barriers but above all by the lack of well-qualified people. Educating the next generation of engineers and product designers is therefore more important than ever. However, a traditional widely used model of Instruction and evaluation is not sufficient to prepare this next generation for the demands of society. It is appropriate that curricula should be adapted. If necessary, in a disruptive way.

The question is of how students and lecturers of Engineering and Product Design can participate on an equal basis in an educational module in which students prepare for a role in society that is in shock. To propel students and lecturers in a new direction a disruptive educational innovation has been designed and tested over a period of six years.

Purpose of this paper is to give individuals and organisations involved in higher education insight into a new method of education based on new values such as student agency, equal partnership, partnership learning communities, significant learning experience, and the strong belief students have the capacity and the willingness to positively influence their own lives and environment.

Method:

The method used is design-oriented scientific research. We conducted a single case study, an in-depth, detailed examination of a particular case within a real-world context namely a disruptive education (service) innovation at Department of Engineering at Technical Faculty of Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (Netherlands).

Results:

The result is an exceptional example of education innovation under the engineer’s motto 'There has to be a better way'. It turns the traditional education model upside down. During their graduating year EPD students can participate in a future excellent program (10ECTS). After a kick-off, students and lecturers are transformed in equal partners in an innovation consultancy firm with a passion for engineering and product design. In 10 weeks, they explore their emotionally intrinsic values that enables students to accomplish great things and to experience meaning in their lives and work. It leads to a significant learning experience for students.

The results of our innovative way of new engineering education are extremely useful for students and lecturers, who are involved in a EPD Bsc-program.

Relevance to the theme of the conference

The aim of our disruptive education innovation is to help students (and graduates) address current and future challenges. They learn to act, to take responsibility at different levels (firm-, team-, and personal level), develop leadership skills, and to be able to switch between a holistic view at system level and product and service level vice versa. They are aware of the importance of their student-agency, and co-agency. Student agency can be exercised in moral, social, economic, creative context. As such our education innovation fits seamlessly within the theme ‘Responsible Innovation for Global Co-habitation’.

It is a great opportunity to share our new perspective on design education with other educators, practitioners and students from engineering and product design fields during the E&PDE 2023 conference.

As designers of all disciplines are increasingly expected to engage in complex problems, involving social, cultural, technological, and economic issues that reach beyond their own known boundaries, so our students’ educational experiences should evolve to better equip them for these challenges. Generating a meaningful response to global issues both big and small requires the knowledge and skills of diverse teams, harnessing the contribution of distinct disciplinary expertise within the context of multidisciplinary practice. Over recent years our department has embodied this ambition through delivering integrated cross-course projects within 1st and 2nd year Degree level study. In extending our multidisciplinary approach beyond existing cultural boundaries we aim to foster practices of more inclusive and responsible innovation through structured engagement via the Collaborative On-line International Learning (COIL) program, established with the aim of bringing together international partners to support shared students learning experiences from across diverse cultures.

Specifically, this study reports on the delivery of a global partnership project between UK and Indian institutions, with the aim of engaging students in cultural exchange and the exploration of responsible innovation beyond their existing designing experiences. Referencing the UN Global Sustainability Goals as boundary objects between these two cultures the project enabled students to respond to design challenges in mixed teams, exploring and meeting the goals from different cultural standpoints.

In evaluating the project’s success as a deep learning experience, a series of comparative studies were conducted with all participating students before and after the project’s delivery. In measuring the extent of the projects impact upon core design values the authors recorded student responses to prompt questions regarding (a) their awareness of global issues (b) the students’ sense of collective agency within their extended community (c) their confidence in applying methods that extend beyond existing reference points (d) their understanding of complex problems and the connectedness of decision making to broader issues. Results from the studies were gathered and thematically analysed to identify patterns and any defined changes in students core design values resulting from their engagement in the projects.

WHAT ABOUT

Within the scientific cycle of design / historians and design theorists, likewise other teacher in ‘Gestalt-theory’, we have to take the element of ‘time’ as significant creating factor, with consequences to the ‘quality of education’ – in relation to SDG No. 4 (by UN).

At the one hand we, as teacher and researcher, have to demand about more time to integrate new research findings into the lectures, in re-writing the readers, scripts. But we cannot ignore, that the daily business as teacher and researcher not offers the necessary time, to evaluate innovative, new research findings of design historians, art historians and archaeologists in Europe over the last decade. At the other hand, the factor time within the historical perspectives, that new field studies and research results showing a different contextualization of an object than before (case study: ancient time) has great impact in the interpretation of these objects, and for modifying the art historian documentations and lectures, scripts.

This paper aims to show - with the help of a case study of the significance of ‘New images in the age of Augustus’ - to act with different media and materials in time, had consequences in a new interpretation and contextualization in design- and art-theory. It is demonstrating, we have to demand for more time for interdisciplinary discussions together in Europe and encouraging the teacher, not even to take time but show courage and confidence to re-design their lectures.

AIM AND INSTRUMENTS

Our main intention, as interdisciplinary working researchers in creative and anthropological relevant disciplines, is formulating a sustainable future together in Europe and working together with financial support, but as well with enough time for discussing research findings together, for evaluation in a profound way and in a free space for creativity and new ideating sustainable solutions – learning from an every time evaluated (design) history.

Case studies about art-history of the roman time will be analysed about the antique circle of sculptures and communicating medias – case studies in the subjects of dress codes, product languages, ‘media languages’ – to come to new interpretations and new contextualisation. Essential benefit will bring, the comparison in ‘reading’ in different media, with evaluation the lectures in Gestalt-theory, art- and design-history, and finally design didactic: Questioning ‘old’ and ‘new’ experts literature about a research facts and experiences within field studies (in exhibitions with three dimensional objects and at the field of archaeologist) matters today as pedagogical and design didactical benefit for the students. This is more essential during the digitalisation phase and a time of missing physically experiences. Experts rounds of multispecies collaborations, like archaeologist, scientist of art in discussing with design theorist are beneficial to share, discuss and evaluate our design education experiences. These truly interdisciplinary activities are to sharpen all Gestalt theoretical courses in the nearby future und supports responsible innovation. This paper aims to sum up the research findings, to formulate together the key factors in re-designing courses and scripts of Gestalt-theory – ‘time’ as one core element.

The burden on the healthcare system is growing as medical treatment advances, the aged population increases, and people’s health awareness improves. eHealth is one of the prospective strategies to cope with this situation which has great potential to open up new avenues to the health system. Despite tremendous progress, the development of eHealth tools is fraught with difficulties. There is a paradox in that there are a variety of eHealth tools accessible on the market, but their market penetration is now substantially lower than investors anticipated due to their low acceptance. It may result in a waste of effort and resources. The sustainable development of eHealth tools can be categorized as one of the wicked problems in the twenty-first century as it is morally repugnant for the planner to address and has spread across the board. Due to limited evidence on optimum leverage points, the waste is likely to endure. The use of top-down approaches and the tendency for research to concentrate on technology rather than service delivery from users’ perspective are part of the main challenges for current eHealth tool development projects. Healthcare providers are trained to provide evidence-based care for patients and have expert knowledge of evidence-based practice in a specific area. Their knowledge is, to some extent, exclusive, which may be one of the reasons why many eHealth tool development projects continue to use top-down approaches. Therefore, it is crucial to empower healthcare providers with design skills and mindset. On the other hand, the roles and responsibilities of designers in the twenty-first century have been controversial, as many farsighted designers assert that we are at a turning point of transforming design from an expert-driven process focused on objects and services within a taken-for-granted social and economic order towards design practices that advocates design-led societal transition toward more sustainable futures. To foster the transformation, design education should cater to all abilities. Health CASCADE is one of the European Union-funded multidisciplinary expert networks with the goal of delivering the rigorous scientific methodology to secure co-creation as an effective tool to fight public health problems. Imparting the knowledge of co-creation in public health to healthcare providers has the potential to tackle the above challenges by empowering them with design skills and mindset in an appropriate way. Knowledge of co-creation may help to alleviate the gap between design and healthcare, meanwhile providing an added value of participation to increase trust. This paper illustrates a curriculum development process partnered with healthcare providers aiming for delivering knowledge of co-creation in public health to healthcare providers who are responsible for designing eHealth programmes on the national primary health care support platform, 1177 Vårdguiden - Stöd och Behandling in Sweden, and the reflection on the course. The curriculum co-creation practice and the course reflection contribute to the notion of empowering healthcare providers with healthcare design abilities.

Human-Centred Design (HCD) has become a key component of design teaching over the last thirty years. Central to HCD is the concept of design empathy, and many techniques and tools have been developed in order to encourage and help designers to gain a greater understanding of the specific difficulties, desires and behaviours of their target users.

Bournemouth University (BU) Design and Engineering students have long been encouraged to make use of HCD techniques as part of their creative design process. However, their work alongside the Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI) in developing products aimed at Low-to-Middle Income Countries (LMIC’s) has highlighted shortfalls in these techniques, which are often more suited to designing for the elderly or disabled rather than users from an unfamiliar cultural, social or economic background. Furthermore, an Empathy Quotient survey of level 6 Design and Engineering students at BU indicated that empathy levels were no higher than the national average despite years of exposure to HCD methods.

After a collaborative project in Tanzania during which local partners were introduced to using HCD tools to encourage design empathy, the authors facilitated an ideation project using postgraduate Design and Engineering students from BU. This paper explores the issues in improving design communication and empathy across cultural barriers. Using data obtained from the UK students the authors investigate the perceived value of empathic tools, whether modern and emerging technologies could offer ways to bridge the cultural empathy gap, or whether in-country upskilling in design methods offers a more sustainable solution.

Toward the common goal of sustainable consumption experiences, effective and efficient education methods and expertise can vary a lot in Finland and in Asia reflecting relevant characteristics. The goal of“Finland-Asia Network for Sustainable Experience Design Education” (SEDE-FAN) project is to build the network of higher education institutes in Finland and in Asia so that successful efforts in Sustainable Experience Design education in Finland and in Asia can be shared. Also learnings acquired in not-so-successful trials in such educational endeavors can also be communicated. In this way, the knowledge and principles underpinning such educational methods and expertise can be collected, stored, exchanged, retrieved, reused and enhanced through SEDE-FAN.

This paper will report the findings of the first year efforts in the SEDE-FAN project where two institutions in Finland, one in Singapore and one in Korea have conducted sustainable experience design eduction efforts. Particular focus will be placed on how different education contexts are related with respective sustainble experience design education efforts.

Discussions on how to reflect cultural and regional contexts as well as educational intent in sustainable experience design education will be included.

Engineering education primarily applies scientific and mathematic principles in order to research and develop applied solutions for technical problems, whilst research methodology refers to the process of applying systematic procedures and techniques to resolve research questions. A lack of scientific training, in research methodology, and an unfamiliarity with human data can be detrimental for engineering students when addressing real world challenges. Therefore, the motivation of this paper was to explore innovative teaching methods, to enhance the education of engineering students on a newly developed Postgraduate research methods module. Said module had a view to expanding student understanding and knowledge through planning and conducting qualitative and quantitative research. This paper explores the differences seen between two cohorts of research methods students, delivered within the first term of study across three MSc Engineering courses. Qualitative findings associated with student feedback are presented considering the unique teaching and assessment challenges of delivery to a predominantly international cohort of Postgraduate students. Innovative pedagogic approaches were considered based upon student satisfaction feedback, assessment results and the occurrence of academic irregularities. This study aims to share the module design, the approaches used in teaching, a summary of lessons learned from the two cohorts and suggestions for further enhancement of the module.

In recent education reforms in Japan, one of the emphases is how 21st-century skills should be implemented into practice. Fukusho High School collaborated with the SDGs Design School in Kyushu University, Faculty of Design, to launch the SDGs Challenge Project as Period for Inquiry-Based Cross-Disciplinary Study for all 3rd-grade students in 2021. In 2022, the SDGs Challenge Project was again implemented for all 3rd-grade high school students. Consisting of 18 lessons, the project applies the design process, adopted mainly from product design practices, in the learning activities for each lesson. Through problem identification, ideation, and design concept development, this project develops students with 21st-century skills and increases awareness of sustainability. The study aims to clarify the necessary interventions for supplementing teachers’ knowledge and skills related to the design process to facilitate the design-based learning activities in the SDGs Challenge Project. This study highlights the importance of supporting teaching and learning practices for Japanese high school students in design education.

The SDGs Challenge Project is studied as a case study by comparing data collected in 2021 and 2022. The data collected was from a pre-project survey and post-lessons surveys from 7 lessons that involved problem identification and ideation. The study participants were teachers involved in facilitating the SDGs Challenge Project in 2021 and 2022. In 2021, 27 teachers were involved in the SDGs Challenge Project. In 2022, 27 teachers, including some who were also involved in 2021, participated in facilitating the project. The teachers who participated in the project came from different subject backgrounds. Before the start of the program, there were no formal training sessions for the teachers.

Comparing the pre-project survey in 2022 and 2021, teachers’ understanding and teaching experience in the design process have improved due to additional online resources. In addition, teachers who were involved for the second year might have gained more familiarity with the design process. However, in general, teachers’ understanding and teaching experience of the design process remained low. As a result, teachers’ main concern was that they were unclear on how to facilitate the design activities.

The post-lesson surveys indicated that teachers lacked knowledge of the design process. Other concerns surfaced as follows.

1. The worksheets provided to the teachers to facilitate the project were not well designed. Teachers found it difficult to connect the different stages of the design process.

2. Teachers could not understand the educational purpose of some activities stated in the worksheets provided.

3. Lack of exemplars for the design activities done in this project.

In conclusion, the current design of the worksheet resources requires improvements. In addition, providing online resources is not sufficient. The following improvements can be suggested.

1. The worksheets design should be more coherent with the design processes used in the project.

2. A teaching handbook that offers different design methods and educational strategies should be created as a form of just-in-time knowledge and skills to supplement teachers’ existing skills and knowledge.

3. Exemplars should be created to provide clear student outcomes and expectations.

The Japanese national syllabus has put ESD (Education for Sustainable Development) into the latest TE (Technology Education) curriculum guideline. Although many TE teachers are willing to implement ESD, few have done so. One of the reasons is that many do not know how ESD can be implemented in TE. ESD is integrated into TE curricula in some countries through product design-related activities, such as Europe, North America, and Australia. This study refers to such product design-related activities as ESD design activities. ESD design activities require students to find, think and solve the issues related to sustainability through the design thinking process. However, in Japan, TE as a form of general education is mainly conducted in junior high school, focusing on teaching technological knowledge and skills, with almost no elements of design learning activities. The study aims to clarify the challenges TE teachers faced in Japanese public junior high schools when implementing ESD design activities in TE. The study will first clarify the current situation of ESD design activities in TE. Next, the study will identify the barriers TE teachers faced that prevent them from conducting ESD design activities. The current study employed a qualitative research approach, using 4 public junior high schools in Nara as case studies. The reasons are 1) selected schools are typical public junior high schools; 2) teachers who are willing to implement ESD design activities. In this case study, quantitative and qualitative data are collected and used to analyze each case. The main participants of this study are four TE teachers who are teaching in the target schools. Each target school has only one TE teacher.

According to the findings, TE teachers are not doing any ESD-related design activities in lessons. The main barriers faced by teachers are 1) limited lesson time; 2) high teaching workload, and 3) low understanding of ESD and the design process. Several suggestions can be proposed in this study to counter the barriers faced by teachers. Firstly, ESD design activities do not need to be implemented as new learning content. ESD can be integrated into existing problem-solving activities by setting the problem tasks to evolve around sustainability issues. Integrating sustainability issues in existing activities may not require additional lesson time and will help to manage teachers’ workload. Secondly, the teachers may also redesign the curriculum to integrate several teaching objectives into a series of sustainability-related design projects. More importantly, teachers need to be trained to have a clear and accurate understanding of ESD and the design process, to facilitate ESD design activities.

The purpose of this feasibility master's study is to develop a framework for evaluating object attachment in a digital space. The article examines product design development through a game studies lens, making use of cross-disciplinary references. The research question was greatly influenced by current multidisciplinary studies on digital object attachment, emotional attachment to game characters, and attachment to virtual possessions in games. In particular, work by J. Burgess + C.Jones, and B. Koles + P. Nagy. It seeks to fill a research gap by investigating the effectiveness of digital user engagement with object attachment via the research question, 'How can digital interaction be utilised to evaluate object attachment?' This research investigates the usefulness of a virtual environment in assessing user attachment to objects in a digital space, through a prototype experience and personalised interviews. Notes and data from the play experience were triangulated with qualitative data from interviews, to provide a robust analysis of opinions on object attachment inside the designated virtual environment. The aim of this research is to propose novel, inventive, and alternative methodologies for investigating user opinions of designers' and engineers' works. It examines the study's efficacy for digital designers, as well as the benefits it may have for physical designers who want to examine digitised versions of their work. This research will allow students and faculty to analyse user feedback on designs - using an emergent method - through an under-represented perspective within product design education. We discuss the flexibility for educators to apply other design theories to the framework, such as kansei engineering. Finally, the study will examine the benefits and applications of this framework for students and educators of product design in a sustainable and collaborative context.

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.

This paper narrates outcomes from an undergraduate first-year project-based learning studio in industrial design, which intends to democratize virtual reality and helps to rethink design education and professional practice for current and future challenges. The work fits in a more significant framework researching how technology can facilitate collaboration, co-habitation, and sustainability with co-present participants who are distributed globally. Particularly, virtual reality’s capacity to collapse the traditional staged design process into a singularity of simultaneous ideation, prototyping, testing, and production. New paradigms emerged at the start of the century; growth based on input-output mass manufacturing gave way to an agile software and knowledge-based economy. Twenty years on, education still needs to grasp how digitalization is progressively dematerializing the physical design artifact into algorithmic interactions for design innovation and production. The transformation is not perfect since technology has limitations. Diffusion problems (e.g., cost, supply) divide the haves and have-nots in society. Acquisition of the latest technology without adequate acculturation also results in individuals’ incapacity to upgrade their education and professional practice and hinders their social mobility.

The first author took on coordination of the subject at the start of the Covid-19 epidemic in 2021. This presented unique challenges. Australia’s strict lockdown regulations forced us to teach students remotely online without the support of our university workshop and tools for two years. Students also felt insecure about their interests, capacity, and skills because they had just started university. The premise for the subject was that the 80-year-old undelivered promise on the benefits of virtual reality would only be possible if we made it accessible to all with their mobile phones, and we capitalized on their high-school leavers’ sense of adventure. The topic was to create a controller to draw, interact and navigate in three degrees of freedom (3DoF) virtual environment and an app based on five pillars. Free and open-source software (FOSS) that students could download from their homes. Heuristics promoted an evolutionary process of experimentation and testing of ideas and designs with no fear of failure. A gaming approach promoted the learning of coding and trialing through play. Critical making instilled in students that modern industrial design is the result of hands-on exploration with digital and physical components. And critical pedagogy challenged the master apprentice and atelier status quo with students’ exploration, knowledge generation, and ownership that builds self-reliance and self-actualization. Students built confidence and design research skills with three assignments. From benchmarking, auditing, and user research to experimental ideation and testing, and finally the production of a working prototype as a minimum value proposition, which they tested and measured for successful results and shortcomings. Three years on and back to campus, outcomes might enlighten readers, since these demonstrate reliability that survived the challenge of Covid-19 lockdowns, Students Feedback on Subject (SFS) surveys show that the subject is popular among students, who end the semester analyzing their user experience and testing their controllers by playing games individually and against each other.

This paper presents a longitudinal study over more than ten years with more than 500 students following the implementation and evaluation of peer review and self-assessment. By peer review, students spend time reading and assessing other people's work, learning to determine what is good and bad (Gibbs 1999). Peer review can also be combined with self-assessment. Boud (2013) highlights that self-assessment contains two parts, where the first part is often neglected:

• The involvement of students in identifying standards and/or criteria to apply to their work

• Making judgements about the extent to which they have met these criteria and standards

The second part may be useful for developing self-assessment skills. To fully embrace the idea of self-assessment, it is vital to teach students the characteristics of good work, or as Boud states: "It requires them to consider what are the characteristics of, say, a good essay or practical work and to apply this to their own work" Boud (2013, p. 12).

The implementation of peer review and self-assessment has been done in a third-year capstone design course. The aim is to integrate knowledge and skills acquired previously in the program and focus on improving their teamwork and interpersonal skills in a product design project.

In the course, students work in small teams (3-4 students) that go through a design process with four phases. Students know when and what they should deliver at each stage gate, and then it's up to them to decide which methods are suitable for performing the design. After each phase, students present their progress and receive critique during four design reviews. They also produce a 4-page written Process Memo (PM). The course ends with a presentation and documentation of the final concept. For each phase, a facilitated peer review and formative feedback from the teaching team are used to improve the written process memos. In 2016, we introduced self-assessment, where students also had to assess their own work. Inspired by the work from Boud (2013), we recently introduced a part where the students identify and develop their own criteria to assess their own work.

Feedback shows that most students appreciate the peer review sessions and believe it has improved the quality of the written documentation. The feedback also highlights that students think that the feedback from others is not the essential part; by reading others' documentation, they gain a better understanding of how good documentation is written. In agreement with many other studies (Taras, 2001), the student also appreciates the effort to assess their work. It is also interesting to see that students have been very good at assessing their capabilities and effort over the last five years. The difference between the self-assessment and teachers' final assessment was about 5%.

Boud, D. (2013). Enhancing learning through self-assessment.

Gibbs, G. (1999). Using Assessment Strategically to Change the Way Students Learn. Assessment Matters in Higher Education: Choosing and Using Diverse Approaches, 41.

Taras, M (2001) The Use of Tutor Feedback and Student Self- assessment in Summative Assessment

Achieving a sustainable and climate-neutral world is a social and complex technological task. Engineering designers therefore play a vital role as their technological developments may require the use of resources on a large scale. However, these developments are also driving factors for the transformation towards a more sustainable future.

This transformation requires capable, specifically trained engineers who are able to take sustainable aspects during the product development process into account. This in turn requires basic knowledge in the field of sustainability, which should students should be introduced to in engineering education.

But what are the core competencies in engineering education related to sustainability that should definitely not be missing? In this paper we examine which competence models of sustainability are described in the literature and which can be directly adapted for engineering education. Using the example of the course "Sustainable material selection and product development" at the University of Rostock, we present a way to assess whether our teaching of these competencies has been successful

While there are examples of public discourse around responsible innovation in science, technology, and engineering, less exists on public discussion in the field of responsible design. Without creating space for this to happen, how can design educators stay abreast of the contemporary perspectives of the societies they wish their students to serve?

Using a single case study methodology, we describe a snapshot safari activity which convened a multidisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners to reflect on and discuss design exhibits and their relation to social innovation. We propose this activity as a conceptual model for convening new forms of publics around exhibited work, enabling critical discourse on different responsible design perspectives. We believe this model could form the basis of further active research ultimately supporting universities to stay contemporary in their relationship with society through a better understanding how others understand responsible design and helping design pedagogy nurture the responsible designers the modern world needs.

Learning the use of machinery for the transformation of materials, such as wood and metal, continues to be an important part of the training of architecture and industrial design students, due to the manufacture of models and prototypes. The teaching-learning process of this type of equipment has always been face-to-face, with minimal interaction and attention from the students, to learn the sequence of operation and security measures.

On the other hand, and due to the return to 100% face-to-face classes for more than a year (due to the drop in COVID 19 infections), the development and implementation of learning activities with the support of virtual reality technologies is increasingly used in the training of design and engineering students at a professional level.

It is for this reason that a virtual environment was developed to support the learning of the most dangerous machines for the transformation of wood and metal. This environment, installed in the VR rooms of the Tecnológico de Monterrey Campus Querétaro, Mexico, has allowed greater immersion, interaction and feedback in learning the aspects of use and safety of the aforementioned machines. The objective of this virtual environment is to be an effective complement to face-to-face training, allowing learning in a more participatory and safe way.

This work presents the structure of the platform's database and the first results of the implementation of this virtual environment, carried out in the February-June 2022 semester, with the support of first and second year design students.

In this work, we introduce the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD)’s STEAM x D (STEAM = Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics, and D = Design Thinking) transdisciplinary collaborative workshop, which was carried out for a total of 47 participating high school students (18-years old) in which about 40% were female students. In this 5-day workshop the students worked in teams of 4 to 5 students along 10 SUTD faculty members from several disciplines, 11 SUTD undergraduate helpers, and members from the Multi Rotor club to solve a design challenge using a systems approach complemented with human-centric, design thinking, and technology-based elements as part of our daVinci@SUTD immersion programme, which seeks to inspire youth in human-centered design and innovation that are grounded in STEM education fused with the understanding of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences to serve greater societal needs. In general, survey feedback showed high levels of student engagement, awareness of using engineering, technology and design thinking to solve real-life problems, and an overall students found the workshop useful and insightful.

In an age of disruption and challenging educational demands, we need our Higher Education Institutions to make the necessary changes in policy and strategy to remain relevant. Responsible innovation is therefore an essential condition of the future. Design and engineering education are potential catalysts to address many of the global issues facing the planet at this point in time. In pursuit of responsible innovation, we need to transform the current educational paradigms that have been shaped by traditional discipline definitions. In pursuit of such ambitions, it is critical to shift towards a transformative learning model that enables us to create a sustainable and sustainability-focused learning eco-system to foster a culture of reflective and informed innovation. A strong narrative is emerging from the literature around the need to shift from a tradition of disciplinarity to one of increased consideration for transdisciplinarity. Higher Education Institutions need to consider developing more relevant frameworks for co-ordinating and creating new disciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to inform both teaching and research. Higher Education is recognised for its focus on the construction and dissemination of knowledge, traditionally through discipline defined ‘silos’ or within ’tribes’. However, this model of disciplinarity is dissolving as an appropriate means of taking on the increasing challenges and complexity of sustainability. Sustainability is singularly the most prevailing and pervasive contemporary question facing Higher Education Institutes now and into the near future. For Higher Education Institutions this involves addressing questions around ‘sustainability of education’ and ‘education for sustainability’. We need to find better ways of constructing and exploiting the knowledge capacity of our Higher Education Institutes. The challenge is to find effective means of crossing discipline boundaries to better exploit existing discipline knowledge in multi- and inter- disciplinary ways with the aspiration to generate an increase in transdisciplinary activity and generate new and appropriate knowledge to address the challenges of the future. This paper aims to critically explore the potential of Transformative Learning Theory as a catalyst for radically transforming the two-dimensional vertical discipline order of higher education and re-orienting it into a three-dimensional transdisciplinary innovation matrix. We need to cultivate transformation in the very way our institutions facilitate and enable the future of learning in an increasingly unstable natural eco-system. Human imagination, creativity and innovation have failed to find adequate solutions to questions of sustainability within the existing paradigm. They have been shackled by the limitations of thought by which siloed knowledge has been constrained. The potential of the collective human imagination, creativity and innovation is vast and capable of enabling us to cohabitate sustainably with all life on our planet. The process of transformative learning involves transforming existing frames of reference through critical reflection of assumptions, validating contested beliefs through discourse, acting on one’s own reflective insights, and critically assessing both context and application.

This paper will also draw on narrative case study observations and findings from interventions in a BSc Product Design at Technical University Dublin to consider approaches and methods that can enable transformative learning in a transdisciplinary setting.

There is a growing trend fostering interdisciplinary projects at universities, as scholars and students from different fields unite to tackle complex problems to real-world challenges. This research explores how 25 food science, industrial design and graphic design students and three instructors from the same disciplines collaborated to address declining dairy milk consumption in the United States. The project had three phases (P): research, design, and innovation. In P1, student teams studied the dairy industry and packaging-related topics, including regulatory constraints, farm management, market and brand analysis, packaging technologies, and environmental impacts. In P2, individual students designed dairy labels for a 1-gallon US plastic jug and a ½ gallon US paperboard container. P2 designs were evaluated in a 100-person consumer sensory panel and a national survey reaching 619 people. In P3, student teams designed new environmentally responsible milk packaging forms and purchasing experiences. Results in P1 indicate that students working in multidisciplinary teams developed a comprehensive understanding of milk. P2 packaging results differed by one design between the sensory panel and the national survey. P3 designs were not surveyed for this study. Educationally, students reported a mixed learning experience. Some embraced the challenges of a research-driven class project, while others found the disciplinary and cultural differences chaotic and emotionally challenging. The two-year difference between graphic and industrial students exposed professionalism differences. Instructors reported a positive educational experience but would train future classes on private vs public feedback, personal vs user-driven design narratives, and consumer-driven design ranking.

Industrial Design programs over the past two decades have modified their curriculum content to address the shifting technology, society economies and the expanding opportunities that design can address. Industrial Design has seen great value in the approach of Design Thinking which is reflected in education through course project methodologies where solutions may take a variety of forms beyond that of traditional products by working with a human centered approach. A key aspect to these methodologies is storytelling through the sketch depiction of human figures. Although Industrial Designers have developed techniques and methods to sketch products and often even environments, sketching the human figure bears further investigation. Sketch depictions of humans range from simple doodle figures as a means of brainstorming, to detailed renderings of end users for concept presenting. With figure sketch depiction offering many opportunities in today’s Design Thinking climate, this paper asks the question “At what level of realism in human figure sketching is optimal for design storytelling?” In the paper we examine the range of sketching humans from extremely simplified to highly realistic and detailed, and what range of abstract to realism provides designers in today’s climate the promotion of idea development and presenting.

As is clear from the urgency of the themes in this conference, we are in a time of rapid change in design priorities, and these must be reflected in design education. A decade ago we would expect to see student collaborations with corporations, exploring new ways to meet customer needs, towards the implicit, and often unquestioned, goal of commercial profit. Now, outside academia urgent new priorities range from social inequalities to the climate emergency, combining with a widespread recognition of design’s tools and methods in broader spheres of application, to create important new roles for design professionals. These shifts are reflected in education, fostering responsible design through collaborations with new kinds of stakeholders, technologies and expert advisers.

This paper contributes an example of such a multidisciplinary, design-led, innovation project, with student output and learning outcomes, reflections and subsequent developments.

Framed within a course that emphasises personal purpose for change-making in the world, and alongside other units focusing on designing with ethical, environment and social responsibility, this unit tasked MA/MSc students of Innovation Design with applying artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to human rights and humanitarian issues. Small teams developed concepts in an intensive 3 week block. For practical and ethical reasons this was without direct end-user engagement – in contradiction to our usual mantra of ‘know your user’.

The project brings expert insights, inspiration and guidance from fields of AI and ML, but also international criminal law & war crimes, collective intelligence, gamification, gender based violence and people trafficking.

The process and outcomes are shared as examples of rapid learning outcomes from an intensive activity, light on technical instruction, and without direct user engagement. The outcomes were in the conceptual stage, but their viability is being explored to assess potential beyond the project limits. Some highlight concepts include assistance for law enforcement against sex trafficking, gathering secure evidence against intimate partner violence, protecting protesters’ anonymity, and assisting fair and legally robust asylum applications.

In this, as for many of the services and products conceived by students of this programme, the designer is acting for users and stakeholders outside of the consumer-corporate dynamic (whereby a desired service is paid for in a transaction, with money or attention). The beneficiaries may be victims or potential victims of horrific abuses, and cannot ethically or practically be included directly in research or testing by students. Despite this, the project format demonstrates that for early stage concepts there is value in secondary research and empathic methods. Student feedback indicated a strong appreciation for the opportunity to explore such challenges, and for a sense of purpose, reward or validation in their efforts to create futures that are inclusive and just. Several expressed desire to work in related fields after graduation.

[NB my related abstract ‘AI/ML and Human rights: Complex technology and Out-of-reach contexts’ was accepted for EPDE2021. I didn't complete the paper for health reasons, and the work remains unpublished. This revision reflects further work and a shift in emphasis according to the conference themes.]

This paper investigates the prevalence of climate skepticism among 3rd year engineering students and seeks to understand how pedagogical interventions can be used to challenge climate skeptic views. This contribution follows a two-pronged approach to estimate the proportion of climate skeptic attitudes in the classroom, understand their root cause and, most importantly, develop pedagogical tools to challenge such views. The first part involved conducting two statement-based surveys to identify the prevalence of climate skepticism before and after pedagogical interventions. The second part discusses the effect of the use of interactive pedagogical methods to challenge climate skepticism and reduce potential conflict in the classroom. The goal of this research is to determine which pedagogical methods can contribute to changing attitudes towards climate skepticism among engineering students. Two surveys were given to 275 engineering students before and after several hours of lectures on sustainability theory and an interactive class exercise to challenge climate skeptical views. The results of the surveys showed that climate skepticism among our group of engineering students was higher than the Norwegian population average and that the chosen pedagogical intervention showed mixed results in changing these attitudes. The results of the study can be used to understand how engineers perceive the challenge of climate change and to what extent engineering students are skeptical of climate change science. The results will also be useful for educators in understanding how topics of climate change can be effectively taught and how climate skepticism can be dealt with in the classroom through effective pedagogical methods. 

The concepts of emotion, making and value, while not new or alien to the researchers in design, have been looked at mainly from the point of view of end user of the design. This paper aims to discover and understand these concepts and their relation with each other from the point of view of cultural anthropology and tries to compare and relate these two points of view to product design discipline. The understanding of the topic here is based on the review of papers published by various anthropology researchers and ethnographers on the work of studies in material culture and ethnographic studies as well as some papers from design researchers. In the review the authors discover and discuss the social aspects of emotions, making and value and the way they are connected to each other socially, through material creations. Authors go on to visually illustrate their understanding of the hierarchy of human-object relation and the activities and the value associated with the five states of this relation. This understanding is discussed through the lens of emotional product design, design research and business research to expose some significant areas of knowledge creation for the increasingly unsustainable world. These opportunities of knowledge creation, at the intersection of cultural anthropology and product design, are discussed for the benefit of product design practice and product design education.

Partly because of societal developments and partly because of a targeted recruitment strategy, social phenomena which are taboo-prone and in which self-conscious emotions such as shame, guilt and embarrassment play a role, are of increasing interest for students [1]. Such topics not only share a high level of complexity which is strongly affected by norms, culture and politics, but they also challenge students in their ability to deal with the more sensitive sides of society. Design education in general equips students with a toolbox that enable them to understand social phenomena, to raise good questions, map contexts by using interviews, surveys, focus groups, cultural probes and use of other ethnographic methods.

However, this toolbox becomes less straightforward to use when taking on topics where self-conscious emotions, addressing awkwardness, having to ask embarrassing questions, and identifying and highlighting dark spots play a prominent role. In connection to an ongoing PhD project focusing on the role of shame and taboo in design [2], for three years we have actively recruited master students to write their final master thesis on shame related topics. During this period, we have developed several tools dedicated to gaining user insights about these taboo-prone topics where shame, embarrassment, awkwardness, peer pressure, stigma and other nuances of shame obviously play an important role. The tools aim to help designers uncovering feelings, thoughts, opinions and insights which would likely not be shared through traditional methods of inquiry – of course while keeping the highest ethics standards doing so. This paper presents the toolbox which consists of

• a ‘shame-stretching’ tool, allowing for exploring boundaries in what is, for example, mainstream, odd, subculture, and illegal behaviour.

• inverse empathy mapping, focusing on what people do not say, hear, feel, think and do.

• a meme tool, exploring alternative expressions of feelings and opinions which are not necessarily easily put in words

• an inspiration card deck tool showing how shame and related feelings manifest themselves in social concepts.

The use of the toolbox is illustrated by sharing examples of its use in practical projects. The paper concludes with reflections by both students and supervisors on using these tools and how they complement the standard designers’ toolbox.

Portable Toilets, also referred to as porta potties, are movable toilets that are often placed outdoors for places with limited toilet access or with crowded areas, such as tourist sites, construction sites, large events, etc. However, as an independent toilet system with a lack of access to running water, hygiene is a significant factor contributing to unwilling usage, to the extent where some would refer to it as the “Portal into the death of hell”.

Primary research, in the form of interviews and surveys, were collected over a period of four weeks to gain understanding of Asians (Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China) perspectives towards portable toilets. The results show that over 89% of users avoid usage unless necessary, and over 82% of the users claim unsatisfying experiences due to hygiene concerns, such as physical contact or bad smells. The average rating of the current portable toilet is 1.6/5, where an interviewee exaggeratingly claimed that they developed “PTSD” due to their poor experience in using a portable toilet.

Additionally, despite numerous studies highlighting negative user experiences, there is a significant increase in demand for portable toilets globally. One key factor is how the COVID-19 pandemic changed the working environment, habits and behaviors of users, especially towards hygiene-related topics. To clarify, a recent study stated that the global portable toilet market is estimated to increase from $12.61 billion in 2021, to $20.43 billion by 2028 (Market Research Report, 2020). Due to this, it can be initially concluded that the current designs of portable toilets are catered for pre COVID-19 circumstances, hence a lack of design considerations for post pandemic user behaviors.

Therefore, with the current portable toilet problems identified and the significant increase in global demands, it provides considerable design opportunities that allows direct tackling of the current issues, further enhancing the user experience. This aim will be achieved through redesigning the interior and exterior features of portable toilets with comprehensive considerations, including manufacture, transportation, cleaning, and most importantly, the usage processes. Reaching the ultimate goal: “Everyone deserves to have a wonderful toilet experience”.

As this is a study of design consideration, the goal of this paper is to provide a set of considerations that others can refer to as academic purposes when designing toilet-related products.

In the 2015 strategic plan, the mission of Tecnológico de Monterrey is to train people of integrity and ethics with a humanistic vision and to be internationally competitive in their professional field. Who, at the same time, are citizens committed to the economic, political, social, and cultural development of their community and the sustainable use of natural resources.

During the last 15 years, through the design of social development projects in marginalized areas of the Sierra Gorda of Querétaro, which undergraduate students carry out during their university studies, different projects have been implemented in which added value is given. To agricultural products to create small businesses, based on local supply chains for raw materials and with the help of the governments and states of Guanajuato and Querétaro to bring these products to the market.

The science behind these micro-enterprises is conscious agriculture based on sustainability, which is 100% organic, applying design techniques, project management, statistics, experiment design, and data science in recent years. Furthermore, through the studies carried out on different seeds and crops in the Experimental Agricultural Field of the Tecnologico de Monterrey, CAETEC has created a new methodology to increase the productivity of these production units and make them the economic engine to eliminate poverty in areas marginalized not only from the state of Queretaro but from the entire country.

The use of precision agriculture at CAETEC has generated valuable information on cultivation methods to improve productivity and information obtained from greenhouses built using the principle of agrotronics that are operated by renewable energy to harvest agricultural products in remote areas and are more marginalized from the country. Allows us to explore new crops and raw material supply chains and apply state-of-the-art technology to design sustainable social development projects presented in this paper.

Developing countries, such as Pakistan are at the forefront of working on UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). The problems faced by resource-constrained people (RCP) living in these countries are multidimensional [1]. Design, with its central idea of changing an undesired situation into a desired one [2] can provide holistic approaches and solutions that satisfy needs of resource-constrained people in developing countries [3]. The creation of research led, impactful solutions requires an efficient and well-integrated research infrastructure and research/design capacity to design and execute research in challenging environments.

The British Council support the delivery of training courses to build national research capacity in Pakistan. Drawing on the authors’ experiences of delivering such a course, this paper considers problems related to impact and stakeholder engagement, especially the extent to which codesign features in project planning, and the difficulties of conducting fieldwork. Analysis of coursework and the ‘end-of-course’ world café reveals the researchers’ commitment to addressing UN SDGs, the levels of participatory engagement, challenges to working with stakeholders and tensions in research assessment methods. The paper closes with recommendations for Pakistan and ways in which this analysis and reflection can inform the design of future courses

This article proposes an educational module that promotes the study of ecofeminism within product design in high education for ethical design thinking. Design materializes concepts and leads therefore to realities. Accordingly, it is important to provide a design education that acknowledges the significant changes design could make when loaded with ethical values. Ecofeminism is a philosophical current that involves the intersectionality of feminism and ecology, concepts that encompass gender and sustainability. Ecofeminist politics work with a focus on women and non-human nature, with the aim of liberation from power interactions and marginalization inside society structures, gender equality and ecology. Consequently, an ecofeminist design perspective is committed to having a care-centric vision towards gender and environmental protection. This proposal will be carried out through a collaborative methodology using utopian theory as a creative strategy for learning. Utopia is the idealistic illusion of a perfect reality. Thus, utopia as a vision can be the trigger to reflect on the paths our society should follow for further development. Furthermore, feminist utopia focuses on building the bridge between reality and illusion, as utopia is a precise cognitive act which could be a beneficial tool for design creation. Unifying ecofeminist philosophy and feminist utopian thinking, this paper presents an innovative way of working with ethical considerations in product design. Hence, it aims to improve the awareness of the need for a sustainable society in future designers, engaging them with some of the UN Sustainability Development Goals such as 5. Gender equality and 12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.

Product development today is driven to a large extent by virtual methods and can therefore be assigned to the field of virtual engineering. Various software systems are available on the market, on the one hand with embedded CAD systems and on the other hand with stand-alone systems. A major challenge in secondary and tertiary education is to combine virtual engineering methods with general engineering knowledge. This results in the quality issue of not teaching how to use the software, but rather teaching the generally applicable knowledge behind the software solutions - i.e. the methods themselves must be taught.

At Austrian HTLs (secondary vocational schools) there is a strong focus on CAD during five classes. In recent years, some aspects of virtual engineering have been taken up to prepare students well for working life. It is widely recognized that this needs to be strengthened. The paper will present the current state-of-the-art and show possible scenarios how to improve the current state. At Graz University of Technology (tertiary level) there is the situation that students have very different prior knowledge at the beginning of their studies (mainly mechanical engineering), as (only) some of them come from HTLs. To counteract this and to better adapt the teaching to the personal skills of the students, an e-learning approach for CAD and CAE education was introduced in 2012. A lot of experience and feedback has been gathered to continuously improve the teaching approach. The article shows this approach and outlines future perspectives.

This study had the aim of finding sought after values in collaborations between start-ups and consultants from large agencies. It is placed in the context of Skills-based volunteering (SBV) and the initiation of a collaboration between the two parties, facilitated on a matchmaking two-sided platform, which is designed by the two first authors. The study tries respond to the following questions 1) why a platform immediate this cooperation and, 2) how to design for matching values to generate trust? The authors firstly discuss theory and empirical research regarding challenges of initial user acquisition to multi-sided platforms, as well as suggest strategies and tactics of how two-sided platforms can help to reduce the transaction cost of social interactions when forming a business relationship. User friendliness and the design of a platform that motivates users to share their knowledge and skills and ease interaction within an SBV setting are also investigated. A design project is being developed parallel to the theory part, focusing on developing a platform to facilitate more collaborations between start-ups and consultancies in Norway by creating mutual benefits. Findings of the study show that: 1) start-up’s need IT related competency, 2) companies (consultants) benefit from engaging in Skills-based volunteering, and 3) if start-ups want be the receiver of SBV they need to have a social component to their business (e.g. care about the environment, help the local community). The study contributes to design innovation since research and development are scarce in the area and the topical companies are relatively young. It also contributes to generate knowledge on how to improve, enhance and manifest SBV collaboration. This is also a topic for future design education, which should add more emphasis on collaborations between start-ups and consultancies and adjust education towards possibilities and trends SBV. Further research and evaluation for voluntary work and contribution to societal development by firms improve the quality in content and outcome of industrial design education.

Responsible Design does not appear to be well integrated within Graphic Design in higher education. Students and graduates' experience is likely to be client-focused requirements of a business to deliver financial rewards without addressing the current environmental crisis, pollution, biodiversity loss, and climate change.

The aim of the study presented will be to provide a better understanding of the current awareness among student and recent graduate graphic designers of responsible design and how to integrate it within current professional practice.

Graphic designers have been involved in the evocative presentation and rhetoric around the phenomena of ‘greenwashing’, where sustainability is accounted for through one specific aspect of the design and production, but the overall environmental impact of product development is not clearly addressed. This puts a graphic designer in a difficult position, between satisfying the client's requirements and aspirations and their own professional values.

Graphic Design effectively delivers the message of a product or service’s value to a targeted audience. Advertisement invests heavily in profiling their target market to understand their language, culture, values, and motivations to predict purchasing decision-making and behaviours.

This paper will present a survey of the current professional values of a sample group of Graphic Design students, and recent graduate, and their understanding and experience of Responsible Design in education and industry.

Specifically: 1) what are their current professional values? 2) do they understand what is responsible design within Graphic Design? 3) what is their experience of the industry’s approach to Responsible Design?

The outcomes of this study will be incorporated into teaching resources that will be made freely available to other educators and industries.

Sustainable design is becoming a common practice since there is a global interest in protecting the environment and enhancing the health and well-being of human beings. However, sustainability is a complex issue. The relationship and balance between environmental, economic, and social demands during the design process require an understating of systems, environment and human behavior, and business perspective. Consequently, there is a need to provide engineering students with design knowledge and tools for sustainable design. One tool is persuasive design since this approach is used to influence the users’ behaviors and decisions. The change of behavior of consumers might have a significant impact on waste, contamination, energy and materials consumption, and other sustainability indicators. This paper presents a list of strategies for persuasive design and a pedagogical model to introduce them to engineering design education. The pedagogical model focuses on the application of persuasive design for sustainable design and its ethical dimension.

Integrating sustainability in design activities remains a challenge, as sustainability is a wicked issue, that is, complex, multidimensional, with no ideal solution. To achieve the integration of sustainability in design activities, the involvement of different stakeholders is absolutely necessary as such activities intersect Science, Economics, Politics and Human Behaviour, among other spheres of society. For decades, the third sector has contributed to re-appropriate social challenges and empower citizens to collectively propose solutions to different unsustainability crisis. In France, the ‘popular education’ model proposes different methods to deliver solutions based on the practice of ecological ethics in the design process. We have selected some case studies to demonstrate such integration (ecodesign, climate change and opting-out workshops). This article will make explicit the ecological ethics concerns otherwise implicit from each case study.

Popular education is considered an alternative education paradigm focusing on improving the current social systems. Aiming on a logic of ‘reflection for action’, it puts together practitioners, thinkers and decision makers to emancipate the role of all stakeholders in building better societies. Its activities often take place outside of traditional education institutions, democratising also the space in which those reflections and actions take place. Often implicit in the logic of the ‘popular education’, concepts like 'commons', 'third-place' and 'milieu' seem to relate to the basics of ecological ethics. However, as ‘popular education’ activities are growing (in number and in power) we question the ecological ethics they carry themselves today.

With a nearly chronological path, the field of Design for Sustainability has evolved from a technical perspective (product centred design), to reflection on different socio-technical approaches (human centred and nature centred design for example), and to systems and from insular to systemic reflections and solutions.

In parallel with the evolution of the popular education model and the field of Design for Sustainability, ecological issues have become more evident and mature in the scientific literature, enabling scientists to merge the field of Design to with strong sustainability apporaches. Design for Strong Sustainability requires the integration of direct and indirect stakeholders to ensure the adequacy of the design to the milieu. This type of design is about making sure that technical systems will respect the planetary boundaries while enabling the co-habitation of all the stakeholders (nature, humans and infrastructure) within a defined geo-political space. So, we assume that the practice of Design for Strong Sustainability in ‘popular education’ contexts carry a particularly strong component of ecological ethics.

We will explore such assumptions using three original pedagogical activities that currently complement educational programmes: an ecodesign hackathon involving students in design from engineering and artistic perspectives, a workshop on ‘renunciation’ (opting-out) where participants learn how to go 'mourn' and opt-out, and a Climate Fresk, where participants reflect on climate change.

The output of the paper consist on the analysis of different pedagogical design workshops that take into account an ecological ethics approach. This analysis will help us to strengthen the relationship between pedagogical practices and ethics involved in strong sustainability design pedagogical activities.

Education in digital fabrication design is characterized by an active learning environment in which ideas are developed into prototypes. The manner in which design activities are carried out, the subject matter that is learnt, and the kinds of outputs are all impacted by this environment. Available information concerning sustainability practices and how affects students’ learning and skill acquisition is scarce. Therefore, the main goal of this study was to use a course to evaluate learners’ sustainability practices and educational experience in a digital fabrication class.

The course was designed for first-year university students. It covered the fundamentals of design and digital fabrication, the design of physical items, including electronics design, embedded programming, as well as 3D and 2D design. Throughout seven weeks, students were encouraged to create and implement their own ideas by designing and building a physical prototype that interacts with its surroundings. They learned how to develop basic interactive prototypes by employing mechanical, electrical, and software components. Students worked in teams of three or four members, and as part of their learning, they were required to document their process on a weekly basis. The online documentation and the final design prototype were the main deliverables of the course.

The course examined in this study implemented explicit and detailed sustainability requirements as evaluation criteria that included: reusing components, choosing adequate and sustainable materials, building instead of buying, and easy to reuse project components. Based on data collected from students’ documentation, produced prototypes, course grades, and a pre and post-course self-reported survey, sustainable practices and learning aspects in the sustainability courses were analyzed. The survey focused on the following four scales: self-perceived skills, confidence, motivation, and enjoyment, each represented by five technological dimensions of instruction, such as 2D and 3D design, electronics, programming, and use of tools and devices in digital fabrication space.

Results showed that high-score design outcomes produced by the students included sustainability elements based on the use of materials and processes of the digital fabrication laboratory. Students were concerned with assembling and disassembling reused components, as well as reducing generated waste and emissions, which was found to be critical for effective and sustainable digital fabrication practices.

Generally speaking, findings showed that sustainability as a process and sustainability about the final prototype should be addressed differently. This requires timely actions on sustainability by both students and instructors. Intervention programs should be aware of these sustainability issues affecting digital fabrication design, without compromising design education iterative prototyping and learning.

The Amperstand Studio is an undergraduate multidisciplinary social design studio focused on working with outside partners and stakeholders to solve large scale and complex social problems. This case study presents a one semester project with undergraduate students from graphic design and industrial design. Students worked with medical experts, aeronautical engineers, and human computer interaction experts in three countries to understand and design a strategy in reducing the death and amputation rate from venomous snake bites in Western Africa, specifically Sierra Leone and Guinnea. In this region over 24,000 snake bites annually cause over 3,600 deaths, 4,600 amputations, primarily affecting children and farmers. The road conditions and intense rainfall in this region often lead to intensely long travel times. What in a developed country would be a 30 minute to 2 hour drive, could easily be an 8-48 hour trip over washed out roads. Due to this, snake bitten passengers are transported on the back of a motorcycle. The design problem is if the snake bite victim does receive anti-venom, which costs $6,000 per vial, within one hour the patient will likely lose a limb, and after 6 hours the victim will likely die.

In this paper we discuss how students defined and found approaches the partners had not considered. A rapid design process which could be efficiently implemented was absolutely necessary as the stakeholders were looking to save lives as soon as possible. The students employed an in-depth research study including interviews with experts and users, which helped them understand the needs of a wide range of stakeholders. Through this process they provided systematic design options that went well beyond the partners initial focus on a drone delivery system. Instead of jumping to only a complex and highly expensive drone system to help address this issue, students proposed a series of solutions, which included a step, leap, and jump. The step solutions were able to be acted on immediately, with leap solutions addressed within a short period of time, and jump was a solution which would need additional funding, but would offer a wider range of solutions and included the drone delivering the anti-venom.

The key contributions of the paper center around how design thinking can lead to a more comprehensive range of solutions in complex and large scale social design problems, providing stakeholders with a variety of options which can be implemented in appropriate stages. This project is currently in use in Western Africa.

This study analyses emotional wellbeing and the learning process of design students in a globally distributed learning environment. Currently students are known for their capabilities to find information, to learn and think, to socialize and to behave in a global network, but difficulties operating in a distributed product development process have emerged.

Global co-habituation via social networks, blogging, and other user-generated internet content have helped to connect student partner teams in different time zones and cultures, but have raised questions of learning practices within pluralistic, co-habituative and virtual learning environment in design.

Uncertainty of design process as a learning object, tackling outcomes from each of the design stages that are informing the subsequent design stage and performing from two different ‘personas’ (the client and the designer) by not knowing prior which role they will assume has contrinuted to emotional ill-being amongst students. During the learning process via distributed product development students were constantly surveyed and questioned to understand how they felt and what was their emotional wellbeing point in a learning ecosystem which they experience and practice for the first time.

The analysis of learning process outlines that it is crucial to have supportive and enabling technologies and lecturers for virtual learning to create a positive, global distributed, learning experience. The learning process aimed to enable students to work successfully with various organisational members in the distributed product development process while emotional underpinning of the learning process was described as frustrating and confusing.

Design and Technology (D&T) and Technology Education (TE) are commonly offered as general education subjects in secondary school education in Europe, America, Oceania, and Asia. In D&T and TE, students are exposed to design areas such as visual communication design, product design, and textile/fashion. The design nature of the D&T and TE subject enables students to experience and participate in inventive and creative processes to develop new ideas. In Singapore, the framework for 21 Century Competencies (21CC) and Students Outcomes was formalised in 2010 as one of the most significant efforts in 21CC education. Aligning with the 21CC framework, D&T in Singapore aimed to cultivate students' critical thinking through design-and-make projects. In design-and-make projects, students are required to identify design problems, ideate, develop ideas, and realize a working prototype. In design-and-make projects, students record their thought processes in design journals. When assessing students' design journals, there is a lack of evaluation methods to evaluate the quality of students' critical thinking.

Focusing on Singapore D&T, this study aims to conceptualize an evaluation method that may assess students' quality of critical thinking during the ideation process through design journals. This study sought to answer two central questions. Firstly, how do we unpack students' critical thinking process during ideation through the design journal? Secondly, upon unpacking students' critical thinking processes, how do we evaluate the quality of students' critical thinking processes during ideation through the design journals?

The research adopts a qualitative approach to structure this study as a case study using a Singapore government school. Singa Secondary School (the school's name used is a pseudonym) was selected for this study due to the progressive D&T program that it has established. A design journal done by an upper secondary student in Design Project A for a D&T Express course is used as a study object to test the effectiveness of the evaluation method established by the current study.

Based on the literature review, the critical thinking model by Paul and Elder was adopted to dissect students' reasoning processes in the design journal. Using the required student outcomes for Design Project A, evaluation criteria to evaluate students' reasoning process was contextualized and articulated using the concepts of Intellectual Standards by Paul and Elder. The student's reasoning process in ideation in the study object was evaluated using the evaluation criteria established. This study showed that students' reasoning processes could be dissected and evaluated by adopting the evaluation method established in this study. The evaluation method conceptualized in this study provides a flexible method that can be adopted in different design-and-make projects. However, to contextualize and articulate the evaluation criteria accurately, the student outcomes for the project need to be clearly articulated. The current evaluation method may still be subjected to teachers' subjective assessment. Thus, standardization meetings among teachers will be necessary to achieve consistency in evaluation by different teachers.

Designing for a circular economy introduces complex networks, collaborations, and relationships into the context of product design. Increasingly, the context within which young undergraduate and postgraduate students of product design and engineering are designing within is represented not only by the customer or the user of their products, but also includes a wide range of stakeholders, services, and systems. As the design process expands from technocentric and user-centric to include and reference the wider context of designing for people and communities within complex product, service, system, and environmental relationships of a circular economy, it becomes increasingly challenging for product design and engineering students to cope with and design within a more holistic and complex product-service-ecosystem. How do you avoid designing in the abstraction of system diagrams and stakeholder maps to design for people, communities and the planet?

In 2000-2001, founders of LiveWork and Engine service design consultancies, being product designers before specialising in service design, have long recognised the need to see the people engaged with services and understand the ‘highly complicated networks of relationships between people inside and outside the service organisation’ (Polaine et al, 2013, p.36). Borrowing from systems and actor network theories, service designers developed journey-maps, relationship maps and service blueprints to bring service ecosystems to life, capturing and communicating insights from research and observations, visualising people and their relationships within the service ecology. Product designers have since borrowed from service design methods helping them to more deeply understand and empathise with people they are designing for and with (Bailey, 2012). This paper discusses the integration of service design methods within a product design process that enables students to: identify and communicate design opportunities from design ethnographic research; explore design opportunities as value propositions; identify and share the core values and proposed benefits of circular design opportunities; develop and present product-service concepts.

This paper discusses the multidisciplinary nature of designing for the circular economy requiring product designers and engineers to investigate, understand and communicate a wide range of stakeholder relationships and interactions when developing their design propositions, building empathy and trust. Service design tools such as stakeholder mapping visualise actor networks and product-service ecosystems; their relationships, interactions and behaviours, bringing the systems and actors to life. Journey maps record observational research and can be used as analytical tools to build insights and visualise the key value propositions of the product-service design. Service-blueprints visualise how different product-service pathways interact across time. Integrating these methods and tools into the product design process helps the product design engineering students to ‘see’ and communicate key insights from their research to share and communicate the circular value propositions offered by the design.

ABSTRACT

We observed novice designers, especially the young, have difficulties empathizing with target groups who are significantly different from them in terms of age, capabilities, culture and cognitively. In addition, they often confuse empathy with sympathy, and their design solutions show an element of condescension.

As Nadan and Stark (2017, p. 685) noted. “Learning about ‘Others’ brings with it the risk of over-generalization, as well as the risk of overlooking the intersectionality of different categories of difference… and other personal circumstances and attributes. This, in turn, can lead to stereotypical attitudes towards people and the tendency to ignore their unique needs and life stories…. Such an approach may promote the view of groups as natural, homogenous, static and detached from macro structures”. In other words, this is an antithesis to the inclusive design paradigm - Which is all about recognizing the diversity and designing to accommodate it.

To address the above problem, we have employed two strategies;

1. Transformational teaching, that creates a dynamic relationship between teachers, students and a shared body of knowledge to encourage learning and personal growth (Slavich & Zimbardo, 2012). This is achieved through situated learning with teachers acting as intellectual coaches who provide guidance as and when required.

2. Pedagogy of discomfort, According to Boler (2004, p. 176) pedagogy of discomfort as a teaching practice aims at disorienting learners through unsettling their taken-for-granted assumptions; and consequently, engaging them in ‘collective witnessing’, ‘mutual exploration’ and ‘deliberate listening’. This is achieved by designing the learning context to engage students in an activity that is both surprising and required them to un-anchor from their comfort zone.

This paper shares our experience using the strategies mentioned above to teach empathic design to novice designers. We discuss our findings around two case studies; one is an interdisciplinary course comprising students from visual design, industrial design and nursing working together in a culturally diverse environment to solve a real-world problem based on ageing and dignity. Two, a dedicated course (Disability and Design) brings students with diverse abilities together to identify and respond to a range of design opportunities. Within this context, we view the disconnect between the user expectations and the user experience as a design opportunity, where a design intervention can resolve/solve a negative user experience.

This paper is relevant because of the current dire health situation of several critical human and non-human systems. In the paper we take a Nordic perspective, being critical of mainstream challenges currently facing many of our most existential systems. We suggest that design disciplines and their educations, together with others, urgently need radical change during the few years that remain until 2030. The paper argues that a holistic and systemic view is required that rather focuses on root problems, than the symptoms these root-problems cause. Based on a multidisciplinary selection of scientific literature, the paper shows how espoused systemic approaches often harm the health of both human- and non-human systems. In addition, the paper argues that these espoused systemic approaches tend to suggest ‘solutions’ that stand in the way of more realistic solutions emerging from supportive and social environments. One of the insights conveyed by the literature visited is how a reconnection of individuals in community- and practice-based activities promotes health and hopes that better futures can be achieved. The paper, therefore, suggests how design and its different educations, with others, can act in an interdisciplinary manner to become agents towards the kind of holistically and radical changes required to heal all broken systems we humans, together with so many others, inhabit today. In other words, as an output, we suggest what and how we designers should ‘design’ in our ‘workshops’ in 2030. And what tools, materials, methods, crafts, social processes and thoughts-to-think-with, we need to change to get there.

The demand for moving to more sustainable production has led to an increased need for industrial design students to understand the requirements and possibilities of circular economy practices. One of these practices is waste minimization or prevention through reuse or remanufacturing. This article presents the experience of using industrial waste to develop new materials. The experience aims to use creativity to have a positive impact on the industry, by providing circular economy solutions. The project is done within a third year Material Technologies course at an Industrial Design Engineering (IDE) program. The results summarized in this article are based on the experience of developing these new materials for 4 years, with a total of 180 students. In the scope of the challenge presented to the students, collaborating local industry would provide a material waste, facilitate guided visits to their production facilities and give feedback in the middle of the term and at the final presentation by the students. Students had to use the provided waste to develop a useful material out of it. The resulting material properties were analysed and characterized at the laboratory and relevant fields of application for the new material were identified. In a parallel course they were asked to develop one particular application of the new material in a specific application field, and to perform a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the new product developed, to identify possibilities for improvement of both the product and the material, applying an iterative design approach. The LCA was also required to compare the environmental profile of their proposal with existing solutions with an equivalent functionality, to validate the expected environmental benefits of using these recycled materials in those specific applications.

During the years this challenge has been presented with the collaboration of four local industries: two manufacturers from the textile sector, one provider of components to the automotive sector and one service-provider of industrial apparel cleaning. The results have varied greatly, counting with 12-20 suggestions for new materials for each industrial waste used. Of these results, 3 proposals could be considered viable, environmentally beneficial and interesting enough for further development for each material application. However, during this period, only one project, from the textile industry, specifically from the industrial laundry sector, was later successfully continued in collaboration with the industrial partner. This seems to corroborate literature findings that indicate that the main barrier to repurposing industrial waste is the lack of demand for the newly developed material/product.

We present this experience since we consider that it has engaged students in the difficulties of repurposing industrial waste, it allows them to consider that the applications of said material developed are not always more sustainable than a competing primary material that they aim to replace. Finally, students learn interactively about the material properties their designs rely on. This experience might be useful to other IDE academics, regarding options for how to include waste recovery into their educational practices.

In recent years, sustainability has become a core constituent of contemporary undergraduate Product Design courses. However, many students continue to struggle to put theory into practice when undertaking design projects, due in no small part to their complex nature and conflicting priorities. Most often, considerations regarding sustainability are limited to the recyclability and re-usability of parts and materials, along with some attempts to reduce raw material and energy consumption. While their intentions may be admirable, such efforts are usually tempered by the degree to which these choices are deemed to adversely affect product function, form and ultimately cost. Furthermore, these attempts do little if anything to address the problems associated with human behaviour that are largely responsible for creating the majority of global pollution and waste.

Undergraduate Product Design students at Bournemouth University have recently undertaken live projects in conjunction with an established product design consultancy. The design brief set by the industrial partner has encouraged students to reappraise the entire nature of consumption, placing a particular emphasis on alternative modes of acquisition within circular economies. One of the aims being to challenge students to identify opportunities to innovate beyond the traditional boundaries associated with design and manufacturing. A particular obstacle this presents students with is: how to tackle conventional modes of thinking that support economic and societal barriers to change? Something which in many cases requires students to reflect critically on their own paradigms and preconceptions.

This paper addresses some of the difficulties educators encounter when attempting to encourage undergraduate design students to adopt more effective sustainable design practices. It discusses the experiences of those involved in delivering the aforementioned live project and reviews its effectiveness and limitations as a means of embedding sustainability in student projects more successfully. It concludes with recommendations based on the observations of the various stakeholders and subsequent reflections on their experiences both throughout and beyond the project.

Although handicrafts are recognized nationally and internationally as part of the identity and popular culture of Mexico, artisan producers, due to their condition of economic, educational, and geographical penury, are in unfavorable conditions to participate and unable to sell their products in attractive markets or negotiate important contracts, since they are normally carried out in spheres inaccessible to them.

According to the Diagnosis of the capacity of artisans in poverty to generate sustainable income, Victoria Novelo points out that most of rural artisans are indigenous and live in conditions of poverty [1]. Many artisans are forced to sell their crafts at very low prices in the streets of the country's tourist cities, suffering discrimination from potential customers who have the economic capacity to buy their products, giving little value to their work because usually handicrafts design does not satisfy their functional or aesthetic needs, haggling over the price.

Tecnologico de Monterrey is the private educational institution ranked number 1 in Mexico [2]. Therefore, we can be agents of change and promote healthy and productive relationships, through practical design workshops, taught by artisans to our students.

This article describes a proposal to motivate inclusion and cultural co-habitation, with a teaching-learning model developed in the Design and Crafts course, which is part of the concentration in Art, Object and Fashion of the 2017 program of the bachelor’s degree in industrial design at the Tecnologico de Monterrey that was taught for the first time at Campus Querétaro in the semester of August December 2022. The course promotes that artisans teach the basics of artisan techniques to future designers, to letting them know the origin and tradition that artisan work represents and appreciating the cultural heritage and manual dexterity that it represents, generating a relationship of respect and empathy, which could trigger healthy and fair future working relationships for artisans and future designers.

[1] Diagnóstico de la capacidad de los artesanos en pobreza para generar ingresos sostenibles. Available: https://www.gob.mx/cms/uploads/attachment/file/32043/Diagnostico_FONART_3_.pdf

[Accessed on 2022, November 10] (Year Created 2009).

[2] QS World University Rankings 2023: Top Global Universities.

Available: https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/world-university-rankings/2023

[Accessed on 2022, November 10] (Year Created 2022).

A typical approach when designing for social service functioning in European and Norwegian contexts is to emphasize on what does not function. That is, one does not ask for reasons for conforming or agreeable behavior to exist, rather it is the divergent behavior that is studied (Luhmann, Wiik, & Bakken, 2013. p140). A consequence of such a perspective may produce research design and developing projects that seek to understand and describe phenomena like alienation, vulnerability, and feelings of malfunctioning. That is, such studies aim to describe relations rather than differences (Luhmann, Wiik, & Bakken, 2013.p.13). Differences can be understood as relations, difference in Luhmann's understanding however, explains how relational descriptions are always logical and causal and thus lack the descriptions of the paradoxes that produce the agreeable functioning. Design based on causality may lead to the implementations of specific plans, while designing that builds on understanding societal functioning as something that can emerge out of what seems paradoxical may lead to the design of a direction for a system. In this article we will discuss how design processes that seek to implement a plan may differ from the processes that aim to initiate a direction (Mead. 1974), in the context of public services. We will describe these dimensions by the existing descriptions and exemplify their differences in functioning by the notions of maintenance and value of care (Johar. 2021). These dimensions will further be discussed in relation to how the functioning they create influence democracy by the behavior they produce.

Designers are now entrusted with increasingly complex challenges and the stakes have never been higher. The complex and impactful endeavours of modern design reach far beyond the commercial and technical constraints and rewards systems experienced by previous generations; now designers are expected to shoulder the burden of global challenges (e.g. the SDGs), to deal with complex human behaviours and societal concerns, plus the impact of the Anthropocene crisis, whilst navigating (and advocating for) new technologies and the erosion of traditional fields of practice. A model of practice where designers are shapers of society, activists and agents for change, rather than service providers.

Contemporary design practice is moving from a model where the designer is at the subjective centre of design decision making, involved primarily in artifact creation, to that where the designer is both an activist and facilitator contributing critical know-how to the design of socio-technical systems. Despite the popularity of television shows that frame design as an aesthetic practice, design is no longer simply about ‘making things pretty’ or ‘making it work better’, cheaper to make, nicer to use, or more desirable, although there is still gainful employment in those missions.

And the role is not of problem solver, nor responder to a client brief, instead designers are now required to work in an ambiguous pre-brief environment, where rather than problem solving, or at a higher level, problem framing, the designer is involved (and/or leading) problem identification. This requires competency in systems thinking, a well-established understanding of human behaviours and societal and cultural customs, and a design methodology that employs high level critical awareness and thinking, in addition to more traditional creativity and skills-based acumen. Our graduates need to understand systems, not just users and manufacturing.

Designers are challenged to deal with socio-technical ‘wicked problems’ that introduce a new level of difficulty and complexity, requiring adaptability to transition across traditional practice boundaries with new interdependencies and interactions. Does the current model of design education adequately prepare graduates for the complexities of future practice, and do we need to transform design education in order to meet the needs of a contemporary world in crisis?

Does an over-reliance on traditional skills and artifact production, with striking graduate exhibitions, work to the detriment of graduates and the profession, masking the urgent need for a comprehensive review of what, and how we teach design? Are we utilising design projects can build cognitive and intellectual abilities, instead of artifacts or services? Should we be focussing more on a non-outcomes based approach to design education? Does the curriculum create opportunities for Epistemic Freedom or does the Eurocentricity of design education continue to be limiting and inhibiting (impacting diversity), and self-perpetuating?

This paper examines design education and aims to provide a critical provocation of the curriculum, seeking to understand the constantly evolving paradigm of design practice to identify both the required graduate attributes and models of curricula and pedagogy that ensure that graduates are prepared and armed with the appropriate skillset for future global practice.

There is a growing interest in the discipline of design sketching and drawing. Whereas its origin lies in the sketching and presenting of tangible (industrially designed) products, the discipline has, since approximately 2010, extended in various ways, along various dimensions. Various authors have addressed and discussed the most prominent change within the discipline since: the addition of so-called ‘story telling visuals’: sketches of processes, overviews, systems and e.g. journeys (Corremans and Mulder-Nijkamp 2019, Hoftijzer, Sypesteyn et al. 2020), also named ‘visual thinking’.

In fact, sketching as a means of communication has grown across discipline borders, and, consequently, the activity of sketching for communication enjoys a growing group of actors and audience these days.

The authors, being sketching practitioners and teachers, have been developing sketching course content aligned to this, both for the extending discipline (Bachelor and Master courses) of sketching within Industrial Design and for new audiences.

One particular course, a so-called ‘Master Class’, which is an intensive two-day taking course to an external audience, focused on ‘how to sketch visual stories’, was subject to an experiment. Firstly, the course was designed according to specific requirements (audience, goals, pedagogy) and to previous insights of course development and evaluation, of workshops offered, and according to previously described vision and methodology that concerns the alignment between sketches of tangible things and sketches of abstract concepts (Hoftijzer, Sypesteyn et al. 2020). Secondly, in order to assess the logic and quality of the short course’s structure and contents, participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire.

Together, this experimental set-up, the questionnaire results, and the sketched output of the Master Class have led to new insights, to new knowledge that will help improve the pedagogic approach of many of the current courses taught and to the follow up Master Class in particular.

The internet of things (IoT) is growing rapidly as a technological tool and solution to various problems. Developing Internet of Things (IoT) technology also generates new opportunities for smart home products, services and systems (SH-PSS). Previous research has shown how challenging it is for designers to generate ideas for such smart product-service systems. Tiles IoT Inventor is a card-based toolkit that helps identify and learn the consumer's problems and explore the design brief's technical capabilities while ideating SH-PSS. We do this through the IoT Ideation toolkit comprising many domain-specific cards. The toolkit, consisting of a deck of cards such as scenario, persona, missions, things, human actions, sensors, services, feedback and reflection criteria, was created and assessed by user experience designers, product designers, and human-computer interaction (HCI) students in user workshops. We have identified five attractive characteristics of SH-PSS which influence the technology adoption. In this study, we provide these attractive characteristics as SH-PSS Reflection Criteria Cards for Tiles IoT Inventor Toolkit. Research questions are formulated to address the idea generation ability enhancement, creativity enhancement and technology adoption discontinuity identification of SH-PSS Reflection Criteria Cards for Tiles IoT Inventor Toolkit. We have formulated a hypothesis to answer these research questions and test their experiments. These hypotheses should be tested in the experiment with the control and experiment groups. This study will be a significant contribution to design education. It is expected that design practitioners and researchers will get help in identifying consumer problems and exploring the technical capabilities of SH-PSS.

Design fiction is an approach to speculation about the future using a combination of prototyping and storytelling. It has recently received much attention in Human-Computer Interaction and design research. However, one of the criticisms of design fiction is that it is typically designed and developed by individuals with certain educational backgrounds and skillsets. Furthermore, design fiction has been criticized for being unrealistically imaginative rather than critical. The fictional scenarios in this instance will be proposals for the future rather than explorations of human-computer interaction possibilities.

In order to create a more profound outcome of design fiction as a research method, we combined it with participatory design and co-immersive simulation. This study came at the second phase after comprehensive expert interviews to explore the future of Extended Reality in design education, according to educators from different design institutions around the world. Based on the results of the expert interviews, we designed a stimulus toolkit for the participatory design fiction workshops and the co-immersive simulation sessions. After targeting design and related disciplines educators in the expert interviews phase, we designed the current study to support design students in reflecting critically and co-creating fictional scenarios about the future of design education and their role as designers. The workshop was divided into three sessions: a) introduction to the design fiction method and introduction to the study; b) participatory design fiction workshop, and; c) co-immersive simulation. A total of 90+ design students from Master’s level participated in the study. The data has been analyzed by adopting thematic analysis, discourse analysis and creative analysis. We report a multi-layer experience of using novel research methods of participatory design fiction and co-immersive simulation in the higher education context. We discuss the methodological implications, pointing out the opportunities this method opens as well as recommendations and guidelines for future-oriented studies. Finally, we draw a picture of the future of Extended Reality in design education and we propose a framework for the optimal integration of Extended Reality in the design classroom.

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.

Visualisations provide an accessible way to unveil new patterns or promote new perspectives on data. Data visualisations can also aid in highlighting the context and scope of social issues and is a compelling way to disseminate research findings to the general public. This paper presents an interactive exhibit displayed at the 2022 Accelerate Creativity and Innovation Festival, at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. The exhibit utilised participatory and interactive visualisations, prompting visitors to share their experiences regarding trust and respect in maternity care. This case study demonstrates how a design research team effectively utiliaed participatory visualisation activities to educate and engage museum visitors on sensitive topics in maternity care and inequities in postnatal care. The use of these activities allowed for an inclusive experience, encouraging visitors to actively participate, reflect, and contribute to the conversation. Additionally, it allowed the research team to disseminate and validate their findings.

According to an estimate by Children of Prisoners Europe, there are 2.1 million children in Europe with a parent in detention. Despite this alarming number, children of prisoners remain invisible to the general public. Children of Prisoners Europe describe a child with an incarcerated parent as a double victim. Beyond the loss of a parent, these children face stigmatization, trauma and stress. The effects of parental detention impact the emotional well-being, physical well-being and personal development of the child. Children with detained parents are innocent, but carry the sentence too, they are three times more likely of mental health problems, and five times more likely to end up in prison than other children. The impact of these children on society is underestimated.

Scientific research shows that a good relationship between the child and the incarcerated parent results in less recidivism. So by supporting and guiding children with imprisoned parents, the number of prisoners will decrease in the long run, the mental health will increase, and the amount of recidivism will decrease because both children and parents are taken into account. However, designing for children in precarious social situations requires a specific approach. Unheard and unseen in a world made by adults for adults, they are reliant on their environment. The whole system of actors and actants around them should be included and addressed.

On the one hand, this paper reports on a design research that applies a systemic design approach to tackle social issues, providing insight in the complexity of the context. On the other hand, after mapping the context, the major challenge lies in translating the output towards a design solution, in order to shape a product-service system that empowers children with imprisoned parents. Thus, obtaining autonomy for children with incarcerated parents based on the levers of trauma, attachment and resilience. The paper focuses on the transition from systemic sensemaking to the design of a product-service system by employing an outcome map, allowing the designer to advance from the analysis to the possibility space.

The process applied in this research is about supporting children with incarcerated parents as a case study. Qualitative research was applied to understand the context of children with imprisoned parents in the analysis phase. The data collection methods supporting this research are literature research, observations, in-depth interviews with psychologists and prison staff, cultural probes, brainstorming sessions, focus groups and user tests. This paper contributes to the design field by evaluating outcome mapping as a possible bridge between the analyses and the idea generation.

This paper reflects on alternative approaches in design education and how it can shift to include current discourses of post-Anthropocentrism, through a review and reflections in current design education. While design is still considered a human-centered field and practice, many theories challenge human-centered approaches, such as non-Anthropocentric and post-Anthropocentric discourses that place nonhumans in a non-hierarchical order with humans. So far, with the exception of a few design courses and workshops from some universities, post-Anthropocentric approaches are not included in the current design curriculum. Therefore, there is still a need to address how design education can deal with the Anthropocene itself, and how post-Anthropocentric approaches can be introduced to students. While the foundations of industrial design education relates to craftsman traditions, for the last 50 years, it has been shifting to several directions. As Atkinson (2017) states, we are in a post profession era, and the definitions of “design”, “designer” and “professions” have become more fluid. Buchanan (1988: 66) discusses a misunderstanding that design education should follow the design practice, and states that “when properly understood and studied, design provides a powerful connective link with many bodies of knowledge. Design integrates knowledge from many other disciplines and makes that knowledge effective in practical life”:

Dutton (1987) writes by exploration, that the student is not guaranteed to be a “better designer”, but “he/she has definitely begun to be a designerly thinker”. As Oxman (1999: 120) states; “if we are design educators, we must find means to supplement traditional pedagogy by educating the designerly thinker as well as the maker of designs”.“Designerly thinkers” emerge not only from designing the best possible objects at school/creating near to perfect products but from learning to develop their own methodologies while designing (Oxman, 1999; Curry, 2014). According to Findeli, design education must exceed what design is today, as the design profession can not stay as it is (2001). It is the academy’s ‘responsibility to imagine the future profile of our professions’ (2001: 17). Accordingly, the paper reflects on how design can shift to other directions with current discourses, reflecting on post and non-Anthropocentric discourses and design education. It reflects on how post-Anthropocentric approaches could be introduced in design education, to educate designerly thinkers and to challenge traditional pedagogical methods in design.

Atkinson, P. (2010) Boundaries? What Boundaries? The Crisis of Design in a Post-Professional Era, The Design Journal, 13:2, 137-155.

Buchanan, R. (1998). Education and professional practice in design. Design Issues, 14(2), 63–66.

Curry, T. (2014). A theoretical basis for recommending the use of design methodologies as teaching strategies in the design studio. Design Studies, 35(6), 632-646

Dutton, T. (1987). Design and Studio Pedagogy. Journal of Architectural Education (1984-), 41(1), 16-25.

Findeli, A. (2001). Rethinking design education for the 21st century: Theoretical, methodological, and ethical discussion. Design Issues, 17(1), 5-17.

Oxman, R. (1999). Educating the designerly thinker. Design Studies, 20, 105-122.

Tovey, M. (2015). Designerly thinking and creativity. In M. Tovey (Ed.), Design pedagogy: Developments in art and design education (pp. 1-14). Surrey: Gower Publishing Limited.

One of the takeaways from distance learning during the COVID-19 lockdown was that virtual labs and mixed-reality lessons needed to be attractively designed. The MxRP simulator based on replicating processes of an ERP system of a virtual car assembly company, models based on Meccanos, were used.

Surveys were carried out with students and teachers to improve virtual and augmented reality practices. As a strategy to bring the lessons to the intramural education of the Tecnologico, or Academic Extension, models of their own cars and planes were designed to take advantage of our student's creativity.

The prototypes of these models were built by 3D printing and machining through a magnet-based clamping model to replicate the same experience in both augmented and virtual reality of the assemblies. Models previously built by our students for automotive and aerospace competitions were also digitized, creating digital twins for learning.

The paper shows the process of design, prototyping, and construction of these models with the help of students and professors of the research group. The collaboration of schools of Design and Architecture, Industrial Engineering, Mechanics, and Mechatronics for creating and manufacturing these models.

Technological advances lead us to replicate professions through virtual and augmented reality, as well as the creation of digital twins to increase the quality, efficiency, and manufacturing of a product.

This paper focuses on resolving language barriers within the context of co-habitation for displaced communities, specifically between Syrian immigrant parents and Turkish teachers within the Turkish education system. It has been often reported that Syrian immigrant parents, the majority of immigrants in Turkiye, cannot be part of their children’s education period because of language problems which negatively affects immigrant students’ success as well as welfare of the community in a long-term period. This paper offers a framework of parameters for human centred design and information design, in addition to new educational support strategies, methods and mentoring, that can be relied upon to help students and graduates address current and future challenges for responsible innovation.

The paper will expand on the detailed findings that Syrian parents and local teachers might not be able to maintain a dialogue due to language limitations, negatively affecting the success of Syrian students. Hence, this paper proposes an analysis of language barriers between Syrian parents and Turkish teachers including literature review and case studies. It has been reported that language barriers extend beyond language limitations, to other factors associated with ‘unfamiliarity with the issue’, ‘emotional barriers’, ‘cultural differences’, and ‘personal features’ according to context, that benefits from a design-led multi-perspective approach.

In this paper, we present ten (10) preliminary principles for designer resilience. These principles are generated from the results of workshops with Dutch design students, global educators, researchers and design practitioners, conducted over the last eighteen months. We identify students’ needs for resilience towards challenges inherent to the design process; concerns about impact on people and planet; pressure to perform; and shaping future design careers. We further establish a pedagogical foundation to promote resilience and wellbeing via the presented principles for designer resilience.

Product designers are being increasingly challenged to innovate, whilst also having the responsibility to reduce the impact on the planet of the products they design. This paper explores and tests the use of a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) methodology to drive sustainable innovation in a design sprint process to identify opportunities, validate decisions and deliver compelling evidence to push further the boundaries of what may seem improbable improvements to reach greater sustainable credentials.

Alpkit (an award winning outdoor and bike brand), were already forging a lead in developing carbon light outdoor gear, and offered the challenge to seek further opportunities to do more good, to target further reduction in their carbon ‘footprint’ of their Soloist tent whilst also looking to improve their social ‘handprint’. Alpkit were enrolled in Nottingham Trent University’s (NTU) Sustainability in Enterprise (SiE) programme (part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)), which sets out to help small/medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Greater Nottingham on their journey to Net Zero. Alpkit alongside NTU SIE project team were also afforded the opportunity to work with the Design Matter group to lead the LCA tool delivery. Fifty-four students enrolled on NTU’s BSc Product Design course were mixed with seventeen international exchange students (enrolled onto the European Project Semester (EPS)) were set the project brief to reduce the carbon footprint of the Soloist tent, working as design consultants throughout the project.

The methodology utilized focused on a two-week event, whereby the students embraced the already deep learning of the existing product and its development through an immersion into the brand of Alpkit and further discovering opportunities through the use of an LCA tool. The LCA tool was tailored specifically to enable the granular investigation required to further improve an already carbon light product. The tool was used in an interactive design process to explore options and to seek the most impactful innovation delivering better sustainability outcomes. The paper details the methodology used, defines the detail and modification of the LCA tool and describes the level of granularity that would not otherwise be afforded if this tool was not embedded in the project.

The Life Cycle Analysis methodology enabled the students to think creatively and recognize the value and power of innovation through granular analysis and development. Learnings delivered through the analysis of this case study aim to prove the importance of data-driven design insights to add value and increase sustainability opportunities.