2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This Great Ideas For Teaching Students (GIFTS) paper focuses on a first-year design project to help students understand the process and value of engineering design. For many engineering students the first-year curriculum includes introductory math and science courses, which may often feel like they lack context. Therefore, first-year engineering courses are an opportunity to inspire students to continue with an engineering degree. Imbedding design projects into a first-year course can be a great way to give context to what engineering will ultimately become.

At our university we have included a design project in the introduction to engineering course for over a decade. Recently, it was decided to expand this project to include more of a human centered design component. This was selected to both align with a piece of our university’s mission which is to be an institution “for the public good,” and highlight the impact an engineering design can make for someone in the community.

The group project ran over seven weeks, and during this time students experienced the entire engineering design process from understanding a need to developing a high-fidelity prototype. To help students understand the need they were each required to interview someone in their community who could benefit from an assistive technology device to help them with a task that was currently a “pain point” during their daily life. After the interviews students were asked to develop a problem statement. As part of this process, they also completed an empathy map to help them understand the true concerns and needs of their interviewee.

Each student group consisted of three to four students, therefore each group selected one problem statement to move forward into the design process. The rest of the project included developing design requirements and goals, conceptual design brainstorming and ranking, prototyping and testing, and finally presentations of their high-fidelity prototypes. Final designs included an adaptive writing device, a moveable closet system, a motorized tennis ball launcher, and more.

An additional goal of the project was to inspire students to consider what type of value a design may create. Students were able to see the direct impact of their designs with people they knew. Additionally, students were introduced to the idea that product does not have to sell a million devices to serve the community. While this project is newer and data is limited, there was an increase in the retention rate of engineering students for the cohort who completed this project last year.