The 'Structured' Engineering Design Notebook: A New Tool for Design Thinking within a Studio Design Course

摘要

The foundation of engineering itself is design, as design "has been widely considered to be the central or distinguishing activity of engineering". Design thinking—which is applicable across all design fields—can provide engineering students with a useful set of tools to help them develop a designerly mindset and to support the complex work of engineering design. Design thinking "refers to how designers see and how they consequently think". Organizations like the Stanford d.school have their own conceptions of design thinking and offer design thinking resources in the form of activities, tools, videos, how-to guides, crash courses, and classes. Like the scaffold around a brick wall that allows the bricklayer to build it higher and more robust, design thinking tools act as scaffolds that help engineering students develop a designerly mindset. Thinking like a designer, and leveraging the tools of design thinking, can benefit engineering students as they prepare for their professional practice. At present, however, the engineering education research community does not know enough about how to support engineering students to develop a design thinking mindset and to know how and when to apply the scaffolds of design thinking. Specifically, the engineering education community needs to develop tools to support this work.