Collaborative Research: Research Initiation: Market-driven design concept formation in undergraduate engineers

设计成功的产品需要多种能力的平衡，包括技术专长和商业头脑。虽然本科工程课程强调技术设计和分析，但它们通常没有充分地教授或讨论市场，而且有证据表明，工程专业的学生在毕业时没有充分把握设计的大局。与此同时，工程设计的研究产生了新的以市场为导向的设计技术，为设计从业者提供了关于如何开发技术上合理且适销对路的产品的指导。本研究项目通过考察工科本科生如何学习设计，研究市场驱动设计方法在工程教育中的应用。它特别旨在了解学生的设计心理模型是如何在第三年的设计课程中发展的，该课程通过课程材料和新颖的互动工具引入了市场驱动的设计概念。通过了解学生最初的设计心智模型，以及这门课程如何影响他们的概念，本项目将为工程师提供关于整体设计教育的基本理解和建议。为了弥合市场驱动型设计和工程教育研究之间的差距，本提案探讨了在工程设计课程的背景下，学生在接触市场驱动型设计方法和工具之前和之后如何将设计理解为一个过程。基本的研究问题是：(1)本科工程专业学生最初的设计概念在多大程度上考虑了市场背景，如竞争和消费者考虑？(2)在设计课程中引入市场驱动的设计技术和工具后，这些设计概念在哪些方面发生了变化？将收集和分析来自概念图（教学前和教学后）的数据，学生对设计概念的反思，以及学生对课程的看法和他们对设计的理解的调查。这将有助于更好地理解学生如何在概念上平衡设计的技术和非技术元素，以及关于基于建构主义的教育方法的价值的证据，以促进学生对市场驱动设计的理解。此外，这些研究问题将帮助设计研究人员了解市场驱动设计方法的需求，因为它为工程师目前如何接近设计以及他们对研究社区的流程和工具的接受程度提供了基线。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Designing successful products requires a balance of many competencies, including technical expertise and business acumen. While undergraduate engineering programs emphasize technical design and analysis, they generally do not adequately teach or discuss marketability, and evidence suggests that engineering students are graduating without a sufficient grasp of the bigger picture of design. At the same time, research in engineering design has resulted in new market-driven design techniques, which provide guidance for design practitioners regarding how to develop products that are both technically sound and marketable. This research project studies the application of market-driven design methods to engineering education, by examining how undergraduate engineering students learn design. It specifically seeks to understand how students' mental models of design develop throughout a third-year design curriculum, which introduces market-driven design concepts through course material and novel interactive tools. By learning more about students' initial mental models of design, as well as how this course influences their conceptions, this project will provide a foundational understanding and recommendations regarding holistic design education for engineers.To bridge the gap between market-driven design and engineering education research, this proposal explores how students currently understand design as a process before and after exposing them to market-driven design approaches and tools in the context of an engineering design course. The fundamental research questions are: (1) To what extent do undergraduate engineering students' initial conceptions of design account for the market context, such as competition and consumer considerations? (2) In what ways do these design conceptions change after introducing market-driven design techniques and tools in a design course? Data from concept maps (pre- and post-instruction), student reflections on their conceptions of design, and a survey of student perceptions of the course and their understanding of design will be collected and analyzed. This will contribute to a stronger understanding of how students conceptually balance the technical and non-technical elements of design, as well as evidence regarding the value of a constructivism-based educational approach to advancing student understanding of market-driven design. In addition, these research questions will help design researchers to understand the needs of market-driven design methods, as it provides a baseline for how engineers are currently approaching design and how receptive they are to the processes and tools from the research community.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.