How differences in interactions affect learning and development of design expertise: in the context of biomedical engineering design

by Vanessa Svihla

Authentic design commonly involves teams of designers collaborating on ill-structured problems over extended time periods. Nonetheless, design has been studied extensively in sequestered settings, limiting our understanding of design as process and especially of learning design process. This study addresses potential shortcomings of such studies by examining in-situ student team design and by triangulating qualitative research, hierarchical linear modeling, and social network analysis. Measures of both design skills and interaction are required to explain variance in these outcomes. Narratives of team negotiation of design impasses -seemingly insurmountable barriers-- provide deeper understanding of relationships between design process and products. The case study teams spent a large percentage of their time engaged in problem scoping, but framed as engineering science rather than as engineering design. Only when they began prototyping did they frame the problem as design.

250 pages, Paperback

Published April 26, 2009