Conference Agenda

Mental imagery is defined as perceiving an image within one’s mind (Macfie et al., 2023). Recent research suggests that mental imagery can enhance the design process through the creative outputs of design students (Edgecomb et al., 2024; Macfie et al., 2023; Tedjosaputro et al., 2018), yet there remains a gap to incorporate this state-of-the-art research into educational interventions. This workshop aims to understand how mental imagery can be integrated into education. Participants will be asked how we can adapt teaching and assessment to encompass different mental imagery experiences, enabling learning for all, and will leave with an understanding of why they need to better support this diversity of learners and a framework for how to do this. This workshop will explore the practicality and advantages of utilising cognitive processes in the teaching and assessment of the design process, with a focus on the experience of mental imagery using a variety of design research tools including the newly developed D-LAD framework.
It is expected that participants will be from across the education sector with an interest in both design cognition and engineering education. We will be taking a collaborative approach to the workshop, with participants grouped into teams of 4 or 5 and asked to undertake two separate activities: the first will be completing a Lotus method sharing their views on the advantages, challenges and solutions of implementing mental imagery in design education, and the second will be a team design task using a potential tool for implementing mental imagery in design education. Through this collaborative approach, we expect to gather a wider range of views and solutions to the topic, and for the participants to benefit from the opportunity to have discussions with their peers.