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Merging Human-Centered Design with Engineering Design: Synthesizing a Human-Centered Engineering Design Framework

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Conference

2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Location

Baltimore , Maryland

Publication Date

June 25, 2023

Start Date

June 25, 2023

End Date

June 28, 2023

Conference Session

Design in Engineering Education Division (DEED) Technical Session 4

Tagged Division

Design in Engineering Education Division (DEED)

Tagged Topic

Diversity

Page Count

20

DOI

10.18260/1-2--43626

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/43626

Download Count

183

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Paper Authors

biography

Taylor Tucker University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign

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Taylor Tucker earned her bachelor's in engineering mechanics and master's in curriculum & instruction from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research focuses on promoting teamwork in complex engineering problem solving through collaborative task design. She currently co-leads the integration of human-centered design principles within select courses across the Grainger College of Engineering.

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biography

Alexander Pagano University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign

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Alex Pagano is a PhD student studying engineering design. His work is focused on the early phases of design and the use of human-centered design or design thinking as a teaching tool. Alex holds a BS in Materials Science and Engineering from University of

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biography

Saadeddine Shehab University of Illinois at Urbana - Champaign

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I am currently the Associate Director of Assessment and Research team at the Siebel Center for Design (SCD) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I work with a group of wonderful and talented people at SCD’s Assessment and Research Laboratory to conduct research that informs and evaluates our practice of teaching and learning human-centered design in formal and informal learning environments.

My Research focuses on studying students’ collaborative problem solving processes and the role of the teacher in facilitating these processes in STEM classrooms.

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Abstract

Human-centered design (HCD) or design thinking has been an important player in the future direction of engineering education. HCD offers a promising approach to promote situated learning in engineering design projects, and to facilitate students’ learning of modern engineering skills. Many institutions are seeking ways to integrate insights from HCD into their engineering programs. This integration should be done in a way that supports and complements existing learning objectives as well as the varied goals of established programs. However, doing so is challenging given that each engineering course has its own unique opportunity areas and needs. Thus, there is a significant need to develop tools and methods which support this endeavor. We have developed an evidence-based human-centered engineering design (HCED) framework to facilitate program development at the department level. Our framework helps identify connections between human-centered design processes/mindsets and literature-based engineering design activities. Because it also builds on our previous work, which identified four necessary collaborative problem-solving processes to support group-level work, our HCED framework can also be implemented to support collaboration. We intend for educators to use this framework to understand engineering students’ journeys and build learning trajectories that use HCD to facilitate the learning of engineering knowledge, skills, and abilities. In this paper, we introduce the framework and its utility and explain how it can be used to help instructors identify opportunities to create HCED learning experiences, make classroom-level connections to ABET outcomes, develop assessment tools, and create organizational changes.

Tucker, T., & Pagano, A., & Shehab, S. (2023, June), Merging Human-Centered Design with Engineering Design: Synthesizing a Human-Centered Engineering Design Framework Paper presented at 2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Baltimore , Maryland. 10.18260/1-2--43626

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