2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

There is increasing awareness that biases of social norms play a critical yet overlooked role in shaping design education, decision-making, and engineering outcomes. Since mechanical engineering is a historically male-dominated and culturally masculine field, designers are particularly susceptible to privileging male-normed perspectives in the design process [1]. Despite this, most mechanical engineering students receive little to no training in gender-inclusive design practices, which limits their ability to recognize how gender norms impact design thinking and practice. In addition, prior studies show that simply informing or warning individuals about bias is insufficient, since individuals tend to overlook, disregard, or downplay their own susceptibility to bias [2]. Engineers are no exception to this tendency.

To address this gap, we developed a Gender-Design Implicit Association Test (IAT) to make implicit gender bias personally visible and design-relevant [3]. Preliminary results from a workshop titled, ''How Implicit Associations of Social Norms can be Operationalized in Engineering Design Practice and Education" at the ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conference (IDETC) indicate that the Gender-Design IAT, as an educational tool, effectively prompted self-reflection and discussion about implicit gendered associations in design among engineering design faculty, graduate, and undergraduate student participants. During the workshop, participants (N=13) completed the Gender-Design IAT, followed by a short demonstration of a class session, and participated in structured small-group discussions to share their experiences and review their IAT results. Using survey data, IAT test scores, and responses to small group discussion questions, we qualitatively analyzed how participants engaged with design-relevant implicit bias content and aim to understand the feasibility of integrating this module into one's teaching, and whether the structure of the short demonstration of a class session motivated and facilitated this engagement.

While this work represents a pilot implementation, the results indicate the Gender-Design IAT has potential as a low-cost, high-impact educational tool for teaching faculty that is grounded in technofeminist theory and social psychology literature. We also discuss the development of the workshop materials which included a sample lesson plan, slides, discussion prompts, and supporting materials which were openly shared to support future adaptation and scaling by engineering educators. Future work will explore how the module can be implemented across different design engineering education contexts and institutions, using both qualitative and quantitative data to assess whether the learning objectives are met.

References:
[1] Anastasia M. Schauer, Hunter Schaufel, Margaret Nunn, Noah D. Kohls, and Katherine Fu. Thinking beyond the default user: The impact of gender, stereotypes, and modality on interpretation of user needs. Journal of Mechanical Design, 146(5):051403, 01 2024. doi: 10.1115/1.4064263.
[2] Dennis S. Mileti and Paul W. O’Brien. Warnings during disaster: Normalizing communicated risk. Social Problems, 39(1):40–57, 1992. ISSN 00377791, 15338533.
[3] Redacted for blind review.