Conference Agenda

In recent years, there has been an increased call for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to integrate Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) into their curricula. However, research on the implementation of ESD within engineering and design-based programmes remains limited. This paper is comprised of a literature review alongside an empirical study at the University of Strathclyde, assessing how undergraduate and postgraduate programmes within the Department of Design Manufacturing and Engineering Management (DMEM) align with relevant UNESCO’s core competencies, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and Teaching and Learning Methods. The collaborative mapping exercise provides other HEIs insight into the implementation and execution of an ESD toolkit and will allow them to more effectively embed sustainable practice within design and engineering education.

Understanding that the products, spaces and services we design are part of a complex system is crucial for successful decision-making. The challenge to propose sustainable, adaptable, and responsible design solutions requires designers to have holistic comprehension of the system they are intervening. By analysing the relationships between its components and the internal and external factors that impact the system, designers can develop strategies to address both immediate needs and long-term implications.

This research explores the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a tool to facilitate the understanding of complex systems and inform decision-making in design practice. AI’s capacity to process vast amounts of data, identify patterns, and simulate scenarios across different levels of abstraction allows students to comprehend system’s dynamics and optimize their design proposals.

The paper discusses a project implemented in an interior design course, with the educational ecosystem selected as a case study due to its inherent complexity, societal impact, and potential for transformation. The giga mapping technique was used as an inquiry and visualization tool. AI aided students to cluster and classify the gathered information, identify relationships and critical nodes, forecast potential outcomes and simulate emergent behaviours within the system. As a result, students not only gained a deeper understanding of the educational ecosystem, but also enhanced their digital literacy, systems thinking, problem-solving, and creativity. By challenging the status quo, they were empowered to explore new possibilities, and envision potential futures for the educational landscape.

This paper examines the understanding that current first year undergraduate product design students have of three key topics: intellectual property (IP); artificial intelligence (AI) technology in product design; and the intellectual property issues related to the use of AI technology. 62 students were asked 15 questions relating to these topics resulting in various findings.

This study underscores the need to deepen and broaden product design degree course curricula on IP and AI tool use, to meet the uptick in AI tool use in design practice to preserve an alignment with the expectations of accrediting bodies and students.

Storytelling is widely acknowledged as fundamental to design practice, playing a role in how designers communicate ideas, create user experiences, and engage with broader industry narratives. In spite of this, research that explores storytelling pedagogy is infrequent and fragmented and focuses on specific sub-disciplinary contexts, its broader implications for design education remain relatively underexplored. This gap poses the question: how can we integrate storytelling into design pedagogy to better prepare students for industry?

Design research has consistently suggested that designers need to be more transparent about the underpinning theory and models that support the application of storytelling. Two key rationales for this need have emerged: firstly, the shift in industry from a focus on product, to product experience, and secondly, the growing approach in industry that employs storytelling as strategy. These characteristics of industry call for a deeper exploration of storytelling in design practice, particularly in contexts where designers must mediate complex systems involving diverse stakeholders.

The author of this paper seeks to establish guiding principles for a storytelling design pedagogy, through a cross-case comparison of data from collaborative projects between their institution’s final year product design students and John Lewis and Partners. In total, forty-six projects were completed by students during this collaboration over five years, with each culminating in the verbal delivery of a story supported by visual presentation materials during design pitches. Of particular interest is the comparison between the projects selected vs. those unselected for publication.

We are usually focused on the product produced when evaluating students' work. As evaluators, we look at the academic language, the description and choice of methods, the depth of the literature review, and the work and originality the engineering students have put into the project. What if we take a more human-centred approach to the education we offer and explore the challenges students encounter in developing soft skills throughout their studies?

This study examines second-year and third-year students, and graduates from the University of Agder. The purpose of this study is to investigate how students choose their team members, their experiences on group work and how the universities should include teamwork in the curriculum. This study found that the majority of the students have experienced free riders, different levels of ambitions and skills, and disagreements between group members. Students prefer group members based on peers they have previously worked well with, friends, and classmates they perceive as competent. A suggestion for a fair assessment of students could be group work, but also with individual evaluation. To engage all group members from the start, a sprint at the beginning of the project could help include everyone.