is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan. He earned a B.S. in Engineering Sciences from Yale University ( 2016), with a double major in East Asian Studies. He also holds a Graduate Certificate in Chinese and American Studies, jointly awarded by Johns Hopkins University and Nanjing University in China. His current research focuses on how undergraduate engineering students approach front-end design activities related to interacting with stakeholders and conducting needs assessments.
Designers often gather information, for instance through stakeholder or domain expert meetings, to understand their design problems and develop effective solutions. However, few previous studies have provided in-depth descriptions of novice engineering designers' approaches to conducting information gathering meetings. In this preliminary study, we analyzed data from six capstone mechanical engineering design teams to identify the types of individuals from whom teams gathered information, when these meetings occurred, and how teams solicited information during meetings. Teams in our study demonstrated a range of information gathering behaviors that aligned with recommended practices, particularly in their early meetings. Furthermore, we observed relatively few instances of teams exhibiting behaviors that were less similar to recommended practices during meetings. However, our findings also revealed two key trends across teams that represented specific opportunities for improvement and that may reflect novice approaches to conducting information gathering meetings. First, teams consistently explored domain experts' perspectives in depth during meetings but did not typically explore the perspectives of their project partners in similar depth. Teams also met with additional domain experts to inform their projects. In addition, teams seemed to finalize their design decisions in their early design meetings and were less likely to conduct information gathering meetings in later design phases. The comprehensive descriptions of novice mechanical engineering designers' approaches provided in our preliminary study provide an entry point for further investigations that can inform engineering training, tools, and pedagogy for conducting effective information gathering meetings.
Information gathering activities in engineering design projects play an important role in the identification and definition of stakeholder needs and requirements. However, few studies have explored how students gather information from stakeholders and domain experts in capstone design settings. In this study, we analyzed audio recordings from 19 information gathering meetings submitted by six capstone design teams to investigate how student designers gathered information during these meetings. Our findings include 22 information gathering behaviors that student design teams exhibited during their meetings, half of which were more similar to recommended best practices for information gathering and half of which were less similar. Our findings, including the list of behaviors and associated examples, may be used to guide student designers in employing effective information gathering approaches.
Elizabeth is an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan studying Biomedical Engineering and Applied Mathematics. She has worked as a research assistant for Dr. Robin Fowler in the Technical Communication Department of the College of Engineering for several years focusing on team dynamics for first-year students and also works as a research assistant in the Daly Design and Engineering Education Research Group working on design science based research in senior-level engineering design courses.
User requirements and engineering specifications represent important criteria that engineering designers use to define their design problems and evaluate the suitability of their solution concepts. Novice designers frequently develop user requirements and engineering specifications as part of curricular design projects; however, few studies have explored how novice designers justify the user requirements and engineering specifications that they develop. This preliminary study analyzed the design reports of capstone design teams to determine how novice designer participants justified their user requirements and engineering specifications. Teams frequently used “Sponsor interactions” and “Perceptions of user needs” as justifications for user requirements but gathered limited data directly from users. As such, the user requirements developed by teams may have been based on team assumptions rather than actual user needs. Teams frequently used “Sponsor interactions,” “Technical research,” and “Prior work” as justifications for engineering specifications. However, teams also developed several engineering specifications without clear justifications. Our findings suggest that as novice designers develop their design skills, they may need scaffolding and support tools to guide the development of user requirements and engineering specifications that accurately reflect user needs.
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