Conference Agenda

Through exploration of the literature on design project assessment themes, five dimensions were defined and presented as ‘lenses’ to help explore the challenges and variance in design project assessment. These were: Assessing Output v Process; Summative v Formative; Teacher-led v Student-led; Assessment of Learning v Assessment for/as Learning; and Individual v Team Assessment. These dimensions provide key considerations for design educators when re-designing existing or developing new modules and courses. Using the Lotus Blossom method, educators participated in sharing their insights on the dimensions, which then formed the basis of a workshop at the Design 2024 Conference in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Findings showed the variance in educational outcomes desired by industry project partners versus those emphasised in academia: industry project partners often value demonstrable technical proficiency and client-focused deliverables over process nuances (i.e. project knowledge); whilst most educators place higher importance on the iterative nature of design processes as a learning tool for students (i.e. process skills). Based on insights from the workshop, a framework was then developed as a means to review and potentially adjust assessment by adopting an emphasis on design knowledge, skills and products. It can also be used as an iterative feedback mechanism to balance industry expectations and educational goals to support more effective preparation pathways for students transitioning into professional practice and guide effective instructional assessment design.

There are many challenges when it comes to assessment in design education and technical study programs. Some of these challenges come from reduced public funding and increased marketisation (Bretag et al., 2019), the rise in new technologies that impact the student’s way of responding to assignments (Cotton et al., 2023), and students’ demand for fair assessment (Sambell et al.,1997).

To address these challenges, we aimed to assist educators in creating and innovating assessment methods. We developed an assessment framework and a physical tool, drawing on the work of Topping (1998), Pittaway & Edwards (2012), Wenninger (2019), and Babatunde et al. (2021). While the framework is still in progress, the tool has undergone numerous iterations and successful prototype trials.

The development of this tool began in the spring of 2023, following the method outlined by Spinuzzi (2005). Over a hundred international educators have tested various prototypes.

Our development process included the following steps:

1) Idea generation

2) Development of dimensions for assessments

3) Testing on users (educators)

4) Revision and implementation of feedback of the tool

5) Testing on more users (educators)

6) Prototyping

Understanding the nuances of informal design techniques is not merely an academic exercise, but a practical necessity for designers seeking to excel in their craft. Informal techniques encourage designers to propose any and all potential solutions that come to mind, utilising their given knowledge and intuition, with a focus on idea quantity and diversity. In this paper, the outcomes of a research investigation employing brainwalking as an informal ideation technique are shared. Students revealed evidence for enhanced creative outcomes of teamwork. Key issues are discussed including evidence for the effectiveness or shortcomings of existing informal design techniques, identification if informal design technique that could be better suited to certain design tasks when working in a group, and if informal techniques are capable of enabling better creative results than comparative formal ones.

The main goal of a Master’s or PhD student is to obtain their graduate degree, which is dependent on the successful progress of their research. In the context of biotechnology, the design of graduate projects can be conceptualized as an engineering product. The present work explores the integration of project management frameworks into the design and execution of graduate research projects, emphasizing their potential to enhance productivity and innovation.

Effective project design in graduate studies requires a systematic approach that mirrors engineering principles. Students are encouraged to formulate their research questions and objectives clearly, akin to defining product specifications in engineering.

Using Project management tools, Soft systems, and Agile methodologies, can significantly streamline the research process, unfortunately most if not all graduate students in Tecnologicos de Monterrey Campus Queretaro don't utilize them during their research project.

Employing this integrated project management framework can help structure pathways toward achieving successful research outcomes and enhance their research effectiveness and contribute meaningfully to advancements in biotechnology.

Design has only recently begun to be acknowledged as a discipline and an academic area of inquiry. It owes this recognition, in part, to the perseverance of a community of scholars in articulating the design process by developing systematic design methodologies. Nevertheless, despite the several amounts of design process representations, we observed a lack of confidence among industrial design students in understanding and applying a structured design methodology when approaching mid-complexity product design projects. Dealing with complexity and making well-founded and justified design decisions often represent a challenge for novice designers. Hence, this paper aims to strengthen the coherence of the educational framework and ensure the learning outcomes of two sequential product design studio courses in the MSc in Design & Engineering program—Product Development Design Studio (PDDS) in the first year and Final Project Work (FPW) in the second year—are achieved. In both courses, the teaching staff experimented with different visualizations of the design process proposed in the course, with the aim of empowering design students by enhancing their awareness of the design process, design decision-making and fostering key competencies to face real-world challenges.

This study was conducted during the first semester of the 2024-25 academic year, when the authors, as part of the two different teaching staff, proposed a visual framing of the design process in their course. These visual representations were developed independently for each course and consistently with the proposed project pathway within it.