2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Human-centered design frameworks are recommended for many healthcare-focused engineering design processes [1], [2], [3], [4] with a key step being developing a deep, systematic understanding of the problem to be solved through engagement and involvement of multiple, diverse stakeholders [1], [2], [3], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11]. Facilitating opportunities for students to learn how to engage with and learn from diverse stakeholders can be challenging [4], [12] with only a few case studies published in this area [4], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17]. Health care stakeholders can be particularly diverse and require additional consideration and coaching for student success but targeted engineering student training in this area is lacking with recent published worked limited to our own [18], [19], [20].

Background

In Fall 2023, the Biomedical Stakeholder Café was run as a first-of-its-kind student-stakeholder interaction event to support student capstone teams as an optional, extracurricular activity. This event included (1) student applications, (2) workshop focused on teaching semi-structured interview best practices, and (3) the café itself where students discussed capstone projects with health care professionals and people with lived experiences with health care challenges [19], [20].

The Biomedical Stakeholder Café successfully ran for a second time with key improvements in Fall 2024. The event supported 32 student teams, representing 134 students in connecting with 31 health care stakeholders, representing a 25% increase in students supported. The paper presents (1) an overview of key improvements to the stakeholder café interaction model and (2) an analysis of student and stakeholder perspectives of the café experience compared to Fall 2023.

Key improvements include changes to timing and number of conversations, framing of information to emphasize both project and life-long learning value, increased communication of expectations to stakeholders, and integrating a novel adaptation to the RADAR framework for evaluating stakeholders as a source of information. The RADAR framework was developed and designed to evaluate Internet sources of information based on Relevance, Authority, Date, Appearance, and Reason [21]. It is a useful tool to support students in critically assessing sources of information, particularly with the increasing prevalence of misinformation and disinformation available online [22], [23], [24]. However, the tool as designed does not support students in critically assessing stakeholders as sources of information. An adapted RADAR framework was developed and used in the preparatory workshop to teach students to think critically about the stakeholders they will talk to in terms of their areas of expertise, knowledge base, and the most appropriate questions to ask different types of stakeholders.

We expect that students and stakeholders will continue to see value in the Biomedical Stakeholder Café experience with strong net promoter scores [20]. We anticipate the explicit identification of life-long learning goals and career relevancy of stakeholder interviews combined with the integration of the RADAR framework will increase the student perceived value of café from a student perspective. We anticipate that increased clarity in communications with stakeholders around expectations will increase their confidence and lower their anxiety related to supporting students during conversations.

References:

[1] M. H. Yip, R. Phaal, and D. R. Probert, “Integrating Multiple Stakeholder Interests into Conceptual Design,” Engineering Management Journal, vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 142–157, Jul. 2019, doi: 10.1080/10429247.2019.1570456.

[2] I. S. Khayal, “Designing Technology and Healthcare Delivery Systems to Support Clinician and Patient Care Experiences: A Multi-Stakeholder Systems Engineering Co-Design Methodology,” in 2019 IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society (ISTAS), Nov. 2019, pp. 1–6. doi: 10.1109/ISTAS48451.2019.8937932.

[3] R. Li, W. J. C. Verhagen, and R. Curran, “Stakeholder-oriented systematic design methodology for prognostic and health management system: Stakeholder expectation definition,” Advanced Engineering Informatics, vol. 43, p. 101041, Jan. 2020, doi: 10.1016/j.aei.2020.101041.

[4] A. E. Coso and A. R. Pritchett, “Role of Design Teams in the Integration of Stakeholder Considerations,” Journal of Aircraft, vol. 52, no. 4, pp. 1136–1145, Jul. 2015, doi: 10.2514/1.C032796.

[5] B. Ku and E. Lupton, Health Design Thinking: Creating Products and Services for Better Health. New York, NY: The MIT Press, 2020.

[6] Y. Lee, “Design participation tactics: the challenges and new roles for designers in the co-design process,” CoDesign, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 31–50, Mar. 2008, doi: 10.1080/15710880701875613.

[7] M. G. Burnham, “The ‘systems approach’ to human problems: How humanitarian engineering can help,” in 2009 IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society, May 2009, pp. 1–10. doi: 10.1109/ISTAS.2009.5155899.

[8] D. Norman, Design for a Better World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2023.

[9] A. R. Dopp, K. E. Parisi, S. A. Munson, and A. R. Lyon, “A glossary of user-centered design strategies for implementation experts,” Translational Behavioral Medicine, vol. 9, no. 6, pp. 1057–1064, Nov. 2019, doi: 10.1093/tbm/iby119.

[10] I. B. Rodriguez-Calero, M. J. Coulentianos, S. R. Daly, J. Burridge, and K. H. Sienko, “Prototyping strategies for stakeholder engagement during front-end design: Design practitioners’ approaches in the medical device industry,” Design Studies, vol. 71, p. 100977, Nov. 2020, doi: 10.1016/j.destud.2020.100977.

[11] E. A. Samaras and G. M. Samaras, “Using Human-Centered Systems Engineering to Reduce Nurse Stakeholder Dissonance,” Biomedical Instrumentation & Technology, vol. 44, no. s1, pp. 25–32, Sep. 2010, doi: 10.2345/0899-8205-44.s1.25.

[12] I. Mohedas, K. H. Sienko, S. R. Daly, and G. L. Cravens, “Students’ perceptions of the value of stakeholder engagement during engineering design,” Journal of Engineering Education, vol. 109, no. 4, pp. 760–779, 2020, doi: 10.1002/jee.20356.

[13] C. Zoltowski, W. Oakes, and S. Chenoweth, “Teaching human-centered design with service-learning,” presented at the ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Louisville, KY, 2010.

[14] C. Titus, C. B. Zoltowski, and W. C. Oakes, “Designing in a Social Context: Situating Design in a Human-Centered, Social World,” presented at the 2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Vancouver, BC, Jun. 2011, p. 22.444.1-22.444.11. doi: 10.18260/1-2--17725.

[15] F. Marbouti and H. A. Diefes-Dux, “First-Year students’ understanding of direct user in open-ended problem solving activities,” 2013 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), pp. 320–326, Oct. 2013, doi: 10.1109/FIE.2013.6684840.

[16] S. Jordan and M. Lande, “Practicing needs-based, human-centered design for electrical engineering project course innovation: 119th ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition,” in 119th ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, San Antonio, TX: American Society for Engineering Education, 2012. Accessed: Sep. 28, 2023. [Online]. Available: http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85029036153&partnerID=8YFLogxK

[17] L. Oehlberg and A. Agogino, “Undergraduate Conceptions of the Engineering Design Process: Assessing the Impact of a Human-Centered Design Course,” in 2011 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings, Vancouver, BC: ASEE Conferences, Jun. 2011, p. 22.1563.1-22.1563.15. doi: 10.18260/1-2--18519.

[18] J. Howcroft, K. Mercer, and J. Boger, “Developing ethical engineers with empathy,” presented at the CEEA 2021, Jun. 2021.

[19] J. Howcroft and K. Mercer, “Developing a Biomedical Stakeholder Cafe: Process, development, implementation, and lessons learned,” presented at the 2024 Canadian Engineering Education Association, Edmonton, AB, 2024.

[20] K. Mercer and J. Howcroft, “Biomedical Stakeholder Café: A People-Centered Approach for the Future of Design Engineering Education,” in 2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition Proceedings, Portland, OR, Jun. 2024.

[21] J. Mandalios, “RADAR: An approach for helping students evaluate Internet sources,” Journal of Information Science, vol. 39, no. 4, pp. 470–478, Aug. 2013, doi: 10.1177/0165551513478889.

[22] E. Aïmeur, S. Amri, and G. Brassard, “Fake news, disinformation and misinformation in social media: a review,” Soc. Netw. Anal. Min., vol. 13, no. 1, p. 30, Feb. 2023, doi: 10.1007/s13278-023-01028-5.

[23] V. L. Rubin, “The Problem of Misinformation and Disinformation Online,” in Misinformation and Disinformation: Detecting Fakes with the Eye and AI, V. L. Rubin, Ed., Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2022, pp. 3–28. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-95656-1_1.

[24] P. Machete and M. Turpin, “The Use of Critical Thinking to Identify Fake News: A Systematic Literature Review,” in Responsible Design, Implementation and Use of Information and Communication Technology, M. Hattingh, M. Matthee, H. Smuts, I. Pappas, Y. K. Dwivedi, and M. Mäntymäki, Eds., Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2020, pp. 235–246. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-45002-1_20.