2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Human-centered design is an approach to design that places human needs at the forefront and values the thoughts and experiences of users as crucial elements of the design process. The method provides a framework for addressing wicked social problems, from environmental to accessibility issues. In this paper, we present partial findings from an exploratory qualitative case study of disciplinary literacies teaching and learning in an undergraduate project-based engineering course grounded on human-centered design. We focus on the engineering literacies enacted by a team of focal students who collaborated with a local school for visually impaired children to address the problem “How might we increase the accessibility of music to visually impaired people?”. Through the qualitative analysis of students’ interviews and artifacts, recordings, and observational notes from team meetings, we examine the students’ engineering literacies learning. Findings show how students used literacies of human-centered engineering design as tools for centering the perspectives of the recipients of the designed products, unseating traditional top-down design approaches. The paper discusses the potential of human-centered engineering design for 1) supporting and engaging students with community needs as they learn disciplinary practices and 2) advancing social change through the teaching and learning of engineering.