2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In the realm of biomedical engineering design, as with all branches of engineering, the significance of the design process cannot be overstated. It is a skill that future engineers must cultivate to craft solutions for both current and future societal challenges. One common issue in courses where design processes are applied is that students often complete only a single cycle of the process, showing a single solution to the required project [1]. As a result, the student is only given feedback once but without the opportunity to improve on it. The students consider that the design process is finished but there are still many things for them to improve on. The iterative design methodology challenges this notion, emphasizing that the design process comprises multiple cycles aimed at reaching a viable solution. This means that we must move away from the notion that idea generation is limited to a single phase, but rather relates to the transformation of ideas through multiple stages [2]. This approach seeks to ensure that the understanding of the problem evolves along with the designers' efforts to accumulate and examine additional information during the phases of idea generation and subsequent evaluation of possible solutions [3].

Our work details a practical study focused on implementing the iterative design methodology within the context of a Biomedical Engineering course “Bioelectronics and Biointerfaces” at the University of Texas at Austin. This methodology introduces two innovations. Firstly, it involves examining a non-traditional technology for a specific health problem described in a scientific article. Secondly, the process allows students to begin with the analysis of the technology to identify potential improvement methods, and design enhanced solution from the course contents, diverse literature sources (including papers, patents, and commercial devices), and feedback from a professor, a postdoctoral researcher and other fellow students.

This study encompassed a group of 17 students enrolled in the course, with different levels of training: undergraduate, master, and doctoral students. They were divided into 6 groups in the topics of Wearable Fabrication, Wearable Materials, Implanted Materials, and Implanted Fabrication. At the beginning of the course, the concept of iterative design was introduced, with concrete examples provided to enhance understanding. The design process unfolded across four iterations over the semester, during which students delivered presentations showcasing their progress, improved technological solutions, and getting feedback from each iteration.

We describe the journey undertaken by the students in each iteration. A notable finding was that our student groups made their requirements more specific from the first to the later iterations, underscoring the methodology's significance. Furthermore, the study revealed a marked increase in students' engagement with the subject matter, evident in their reading and extraction of relevant information from an average of ten articles for each group to enhance their technology. Ultimately, as the iterations progressed, the students not only effectively applied their classroom knowledge but also demonstrated increasingly specific and viable technical language when describing their improvements. Feedback played a pivotal role, especially when students encountered challenges and technical concerns while refining their designs. Our students genuinely appreciated the interactive design project within the course, as evident from their course comments. They found the process valuable, including the incorporation of multiple checkpoints throughout the class, the practice of presenting each iteration, and the valuable feedback received. They embraced that the initial idea or solution may not always be the optimal one and recognized that iterative design was important to continually improve a device design. We believe that our incorporation of iterative design approach in their group projects will also allow them to see the impact of this type of innovation in the classroom.