2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This Teaching Curriculum & Pedagogy paper presents a classroom intervention in a sophomore mechanical engineering project course focused on product design and development. In the activity, student teams design and prototype awards to be given to their peers at the end of the semester. Conducted around the fifth week of the term, the activity invites students to practice human-centered design, develop requirements, and engage in low-fidelity prototyping through a playful, community-building experience. Instead of recognizing “the best” or “the most,” students imagine what kinds of achievements, attitudes, or experiences might be worth celebrating later in the course. The resulting awards, such as the Ctrl+Z Champion, Five-Hour Energy Award, No’Bel Prize, and I Tried Award, illustrate how students project their understanding of creativity, persistence, and teamwork into a speculative future of their class community.

The assignment began as a faculty development workshop on rapid prototyping and community formation, then was adapted for undergraduates. It unfolds in three stages: award specification, award design, and cardboard prototyping. Students define award criteria, sketch concepts, and build tangible representations from low-fidelity materials. The rules are intentionally lighthearted. Each award must be physically three-dimensional, completed within a 30-minute build session, and titled without using the words best or most. These parameters encourage creativity, balance participation, and draw attention to process over product.

A thematic analysis of student submissions shows early evidence of collective identity formation and intrinsic motivation. In the specification stage, teams proposed awards that emphasized humor, empathy, and self-awareness. Many recognized qualities such as perseverance, iteration, or collaboration rather than technical achievement. During prototyping, students turned these abstract values into physical metaphors: ladders to represent persistence, uneven bases to suggest imperfection, and recycled materials to signify resourcefulness. Near the end of the semester, students reconvened to present their awards to peers whose work or behavior reflected the imagined qualities. This process of recognition prompted reflection on what counts as success in design and what aspects of the process deserve celebration.

By framing recognition as a design challenge, the activity introduces a form of gamification that builds community and helps students co-create the values of their learning environment. Instead of competing for grades or extrinsic rewards, students engage in intrinsic sense-making about creativity, persistence, and belonging. The awards function as symbolic artifacts that connect humor and sincerity, making visible the social and emotional aspects of engineering design learning. Their significance lies less in the finished prototypes and more in the conversations they inspire about curiosity, design process, and personal growth.

Findings suggest that playful and speculative exercises like this one can strengthen human-centered mindsets and encourage students to anticipate, rather than simply reflect on, their development as designers. The paper concludes by offering this approach as a model for integrating community-oriented co-designing into engineering design education, turning recognition itself into an opportunity for learning.