Front-end design methodologies

Design is a central, distinguishing feature of engineering requiring the development of technical solutions to well-defined societal problems. Successful design solutions must not only be technically sound, but also well-adapted to the context and culture in which they will be deployed. However, common strategies for understanding customers’ preferences (e.g., surveys, customer complaints, etc.) typically only uncover surface-level information and may not reveal critical contextual information.

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Stakeholders from St. Paul's Hospital Millennium Medical College (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) critique a task-shifting prototype.

Design ethnography is a collection of primarily qualitative data collection and analysis techniques that have been adapted from the field of anthropology to support design decisions during the engineering design process. Studies in the fields of computer-supported cooperative work and product development have demonstrated that design ethnography techniques lead to more successful products and are cost-effective. The Sienko Research Group is investigating how design ethnography can be used to design medical devices, how engineering students use and develop these skills, and how industry practitioners use design ethnography.

Funding Source

University of Michigan’s Rackham Merit Fellows programNational Science Foundation

University of Michigan’s Rackham Merit Fellows program

National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship program

National Science Foundation’s Research Initiation Grants in Engineering Education (RIGEE 1340459)

National Science Foundation’s CAREER program (RAPD-0846471)

University of Michigan Center for Research on Learning and Teaching’s Investigating Student Learning Grant

Collaborators

Shanna Daly