Engineering Schools Struggle to Teach Design Thinking—Here's Why It Matters

<p>Modern industry faces complex and 'wicked' problems that require engineering professionals to go beyond traditional natural science-based linear problem-solving approaches and adopt collaborative, multidisciplinary, and iterative problem-solving strategies. To tackle these kinds of problems, organizations are increasingly turning to design problem- solving methods based on the designer’s way of thinking, acting, and doing. Designers have a distinctive ability to deal with poorly defined, ambiguous, or "wicked" problems by emphasizing iterative exploration of both the problem and the solution spaces. They do this through design reasoning patterns that involve constant iteration and temporary solutions. This shift towards designerly ways of problem-solving has, in turn, had an effect on engineering education, where there has been a significant shift towards educational models that utilize design methodologies to engage students in immersive problem-solving experiences. One challenge for educators who utilize models based on designerly thinking is to create structures that actually support the learning objectives, and the development of student skills that are rooted in design reasoning and acting, and not merely in design tools. Another challenge is to support collaboration across multiple areas that traditionally had clear boundaries.</p><p>This thesis studies practices utilized by educators in problem-based designerly education to understand the underlying mechanisms and theoretical underpinnings of problem exploration in multidisciplinary education. Additionally, this thesis aims to explore and discuss the same processes and methods in the context of multidisciplinary education and design objects that can support collaboration across boundaries.</p><p>This thesis's key contributions are the exploration and discussion of aspects of problem exploration, framing, and reframing in a designerly problem-based multidisciplinary educational environment, as well as the challenges and difficulties that educators and students encounter in the process of exploring problems and collaborating and crossing disciplinary boundaries with participants from multiple disciplines. To do so, this thesis first explores the importance that (the framing of the) design brief has in the problem-solving process. Furthermore, the design briefs are discussed as boundary objects that serve a crucial role in negotiation, communication, and coordination tools between stakeholders. Second, the importance of the reflective process that follows the idea generation and prototype-building activities are discussed as an aspect of an educational model that allows participants to explore problems and avoid design fixation. Moreover, these objects are discussed based on their function as disciplinary boundary crossing objects and as an aid in negotiation, and collaboration objects in problem exploration. Thirdly, methods and processes for assessment of student characteristics and skills are discussed, where tensions and trade-offs between self-reporting and observer-based methods are studied and explored. These methods then serve as boundary objects in the discussions between teaching teams in the student team formation process. Furthermore, team building and specifically the process of trust-building and objects that aid in boundary-crossing collaboration and communication to develop trust between students are also discussed.</p>