2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Although researchers in engineering education continue to develop engineering design methods with potential to enhance creativity, divergent thinking, and efficiency, these methods often fail to be adopted and gain traction in real-world settings. Some prior research has identified approaches and challenges related to design method adoption through a researcher’s personal experiences and single-company case studies, which has resulted in fragmented insights and limited generalizability. There is little work investigating design method adoption through systematic investigations. By examining the factors that influence adoption and integration of new design processes broadly, this work aims to bridge the gap between academic innovation and practice and provide empirical insights into the conditions under which new design methods are most likely to be adopted and sustained in practice.
To better understand this adoption gap, semi-structured interviews were conducted with practitioners to identify the organizational, methodological, and personal factors that impede and promote the adoption of new design methods. Based on these insights, a refined and targeted survey instrument was developed to systematically assess these factors at a broader scale. The survey was deployed during the Innovation Research Interchange (IRI) webinar, enabling us to gather responses from a diverse set of industry professionals engaged in innovation. The survey results were analyzed to quantify the types of organizations that engage with innovation and design methodology, and evaluate the degree to which the identified organizational, methodological and practitioner related factors impact method adoption within their organizations. The results of this work offer industry insights into the catalysts and barriers influencing design method adoption, while also providing method developers and educators with guidance on how to more effectively design and teach methods that lead to organizational impact. Insights from this research can inform both curricular approaches and professional development strategies, ultimately preparing future engineers to not just to generate new ideas, but to champion and implement them effectively in practice.