Strategies to Address “Design Thinking” in Engineering Curriculum

It is suggested by many scholars that if the goal of engineering education is to produce engineers who can critically design and create, then providing students with early opportunities to engage in creative engineering design is important. While basic design is focused on the development of new products for the individual, working towards a more sustainable world demands greater attention to designing for and with communities. Improving design education and examining design-learning outcomes requires a kind of targeted approach that could match the best practices to personalize student learning. Design is complex and design includes balancing the needs of multiple stakeholders. However, there is a gap in the preparation of design education that will be needed in a challenging environment. This paper reviews the history of design thinking in the engineering curriculum. Design thinking education starts with an understanding of its importance with socioeconomic relevance. Through observation and empathy, mapping the designer uses the listening and learning tools for mapping users unarticulated needs, working in a team environment. The designer takes time to think carefully why a certain project is considered and details which aspects of machine learning application can be applied from functional to complete success for the end users. The availability of powerful virtual reality methodologies, have made it possible to consider the realistic needs and visualize scenarios and to explore the design alternatives with new ideas before full scale resource allocation on new ideas. Mid-to-advanced level courses with experimental assignments require that students apply through experimentation the principles and concepts learned in foundation courses. The basic design tools such as axiomatic thinking, theory of inventive problem solving, design iteration and simulation using hardware-in-the loop are discussed with case studies. Consideration of product sustainability with the thoughts of design for disassembly and disposal has emerged as a major part of design thinking. Senior engineering courses center on cross and interdisciplinary design and capstone experiences so that students experience fully guided practice of device design and problem solving, simulating what they are likely to experience in the world. This paper examines the critical issues of design thinking in a curriculum from observation, empathy mapping, validation of the idea, and improvement of idea by virtual reality and machine learning, optimization of the idea by tools such as axiomatic design, hardware in the loop simulation, and finally examining product sustainability causes.