Collaborating Interaction Design into Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS)

Abstract

This paper investigates the design collaboration process between the Interaction Design (IXD) program and Engineering Projects in Community Service (EPICS) program at Purdue University. There have been quite a few recent research focused on analyzing the collaboration between Industrial Design students and Engineering students. However, little in the literature has been dedicated to discuss the education of Interaction Design and its collaboration with engineering programs. In this research, we tried to identify characteristics that differentiate IXD and EPICS students by focusing on the experiences of the IXD students. Some characteristics made the collaboration successful, but other created frustrations. In order to understand, explore, and evaluate the collaboration process, we collected the data during and after the collaboration and qualitatively analyzed it using a design collaboration model. This analysis identified several interesting features of this interdisciplinary collaboration. The collaboration between two programs benefited both sides and will be conducted regularly. The understanding gained from this study helps to understand and manage the discourse during the interdisciplinary collaboration, which will benefit our future education and inspire better interdisciplinary education and collaboration.

Design of an Open Platform for Multi-Disciplinary Approach in Project-Based Learning of an EPICS Class

“…EPICS, an engineering design-based service learning and social entrepreneurship program, incorporates the engineering and human-centered design processes in providing solutions to real-world problems. With the same orientation, Cheryl et al [24] desire to discover the relationship between the Interaction Design program and EPICS program at Purdue university. By focusing on students' experience, they identified several characteristics of a collaboration process via models.…”

Enhance Creative Thinking by Collaborating with Designers

“…The collaboration of technique and design was definitely a winning start. However, we have had experience with projects having such interdisciplinary collaboration that were not very successful [2]. To understand more about this process, we not only analyzed the process data collected, but also reviewed the entire process with all of our student participants after conference presentations.…”

“…As educators, we look forward to inspiring, motivating, and fostering students' creativity. Most technology and engineering students tend to quickly focus on the technical aspects of a project, and design students tend to focus on usability, quality, innovation, and the aesthetics of products [2]. In this paper, we discuss our collaborative practice to integrate these two tendency directions and inspire creativity in the practice.…”