Conference Agenda

UN’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) states that persons with disabilities should be given opportunity to develop their creative and intellectual potential, not only for their own benefit, but for the enrichment of society. It means the right, not to consume what others have created, but to share one’s own ideas, aesthetic expression and intellectual work. Our thesis is that there is an unused potential in persons with disabilities. What if designers saw the world of a person with disabilities as a resource of diversity, rather than a lack of normality? What if designers would tap into this resource of perspectives from everyday life to innovation of technology? We like to understand if AI could unleash the potential of persons with disabilities, by visualising and translating between person and technology. We discuss conversational services used for persons with learning and language disabilities, including AI visualization techniques. Our goal is to prepare for the re-design of software, translating between text-based services and symbolic language, so called Augmented and Alternative Communication (AAC). Our case is a family with a young adult, with learning and intellectual disabilities, using AAC for social activities such as hiking. We find both barriers and potential. Barriers to harness the unused resources due to traditional co-design methods, excluding persons with other languages than verbal and text. It is weighed up by the potential of AI to democratize through lack of prejudice and norms and make it easier to interpret, create, visualise and share.

Participatory Design (PD) emphasizes the potential importance of user participation in enhancing the effectiveness of New Product Development (NPD). The article focuses on two main aspects within participatory product design: “the Conceptual Positioning with User Participation” and “the Relationship between User and Designer.” The results indicate that, in the design process of NPD, “Information Exchange,” “Knowledge Co-creation,” “Identification-Activation of Creative Users,” and “Responsible Behaviour of Users” all positively influence the effectiveness of NPD. However, the intensity of these effects and the moderating effect of "Enterprise Absorptive Capacity" depend on the actual implementation of user participation. This study provides new perspectives and data support for the theoretical research and practical application of participatory design and also offers recommendations for PD education in universities in China.

Design workshops are participatory collaborations based on design thinking, where participants from diverse backgrounds take up a local issue and work in teams to propose a design solution over a period of two to five days. Workshop attendees are multifaceted, from researchers, to designers, government workers, students, and even people with disabilities. To facilitate interactions and allow participants to get to know each other, icebreaking is a method often used for the initial meeting or to commence day’s activities. However, the ice-breaking approach changed significantly after the coronavirus pandemic, when design workshops went from face-to-face encounters to virtual meetings. Online applications have replaced face-to-face discussions and even the traditional white board. The methods, tools, and effectiveness of icebreaking communication have changed significantly over recent years.

The design question for this study is how can individuals explore new ice-breaking possibilities and enhance their effectiveness in the era of new, predominantly online, design workshops.

The study focuses on icebreaking methods of in-person, online, and hybrid design workshops. The two perspectives of icebreaking—communication and creativity—were compared. The purpose of the study is to clarify the characteristics and effectiveness of each ice-breaking method; ultimately proposing new icebreaking techniques that integrate online and in-person elements for post-COVID design workshops.

Design workshops conducted by the author in Japan and internationally were investigated. These workshops are divided into three categories: face-to-face design workshops from 2012 to 2019, online workshops from 2019 to 2022, and a hybrid workshop from 2022 to 2023. Video recordings of these workshops as well as the data from participant surveys were analyzed to understand how each icebreaker was conducted, the tools used, the communication between participants, and the creativity of the icebreaker exercise. Based on the collected data, good ice-breaking perspectives were extracted to be appropriate for all three types of design workshops. With these novel icebreaking approaches, participants of the design workshops would not only become acquainted after the first meeting but be inspired to collaborate creatively with each other despite the setting of the design workshop.

The findings of this study would be useful to workshop practitioners, educators interested in innovative teaching methods, and human resources individuals in charge of developing companies. This research has the potential to foster participant interest amongst each other, teamwork, and the proposal of innovative solutions during workshop activities.

With the introduction of the new IDE bachelor in 2021 all courses underwent a revision to promote, amongst other, an autonomous learning attitude. The conventional approach of teaching engineering relied on direct instructions and problem-based learning and proved to be inadequate, as students struggled to apply their engineering knowledge in capstone design projects. Based on our research none of the student’s applied mechanics and materials and only a handful referenced to materials and manufacturing processes in their capstone project.

To align with the new approach and to increase the application of engineering in capstone design projects, “productive failure” was introduced as a new didactical approach within our first-year course, Understanding Product Engineering (UPE, IOB1-2). Productive failure flips the traditional learning process and starts with an explorative problem which students cannot solve without the right knowledge. This is followed by an instruction explaining the missing concept. The approach engages students in active problem-solving, with the goal to increase the retention time of the theoretical concepts. We have developed our education around this using our in-house developed framework which includes lectures, workshops, and instruction videos facilitating the seamless integration of this approach into our own courses but also to disseminate it among our academic peers.

Based on literature productive failure seems to increase the retention time but is not tested in the context of engineering design. To evaluate the retention time of productive failure and to compare it with the conventional approach of direct instructions, we developed a test to measure students’ retention of the taught knowledge. During the second-year follow-up course of Product Engineering (PE, IOB3-5) we started with an in-class formative entrance-test. An online multiple-choice test was created using questions mirroring those from the first-year final exam. We asked students to do this test with the uttermost care and fill it in seriously without gambling an answer. Students always had the opportunity to tick off the “I don’t know” box without consequences. Of the 282 students performing this test, 16% were repeaters, and 14% were students which transitioned from the previous bachelor program, having never taken the first-year UPE course.

This paper will present the outcomes of this test and our findings into the possible retention time of our approach. This study will be repeated annually, serving as longitudinal study of our engineering education to continuously assess and improve our didactical approach.