Design Education and Practice

Design education and practice in mechanical engineering examines how engineers develop, teach, and refine the cognitive and collaborative processes behind creating new products and systems—from early concept sketches to working prototypes. Researchers study how creativity can be cultivated rather than assumed, how teams share and structure knowledge across complex projects, and how strategies like biomimetics—drawing structural or functional inspiration from biological systems—can expand the solution space available to designers. The work matters because the gap between technical knowledge and effective design judgment is where many engineering failures originate, and closing it has direct consequences for product safety, sustainability, and innovation. Open questions include how to assess creative competence in engineering students, how human designers can best collaborate with AI-assisted tools, and whether design thinking methods transfer reliably across cultures and institutional contexts.

Works

83,328

Total citations

659,586

Keywords

Design ThinkingEngineering DesignCreativityInnovationBiomimeticsKnowledge Management