2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Considering diverse perspectives is crucial for advancing inclusive engineering design. This study investigates how teaching different human figure sketching methods influences engineering students’ user consideration, idea generation outcomes, sketching preferences, design self-efficacy, and sense of belonging. Ten sketching workshops were conducted across Summer and Fall 2025. Participants received instruction in one of three figure sketching methods seen in Figure 1 or a control condition with no figure sketching instruction. Students then completed an idea generation task where figure sketching conditions were prompted to include representations of people in their ideas and the control group was not. In Fall, an additional control group was added that prompted to include figures during idea generation with no figure sketching instruction. Finally, pre- and post- surveys were administered with self-efficacy, sense of belonging and preference questions. Results indicate that figure sketching instruction may support more specific user consideration during ideation instead of creating solutions for generic users. Fall workshop results showed differences in idea quantity across conditions, with the fewest observed when students were prompted to include people without figure sketching instruction. Students generally preferred the figure sketching method they were trained on. However, preference did not always align with intended future use. Small but directionally consistent pre–post self-efficacy score increases were observed across conditions and no meaningful changes were observed for sense of belonging. This work aims to further the work on visual communication in engineering design and has implications on how design education is structured, highlighting the importance of including user-centric methods early in the curriculum to shape the next generation of human-centered engineers and designers.