2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

In this research and assessment paper, we explore the long-standing phenomenon of overreliance on “average sizes.” This work is motivated by the lack of considerations in appropriate test populations and brings attention to the barriers faced by an overlooked population – people in larger bodies.

Fat studies remain understudied in fields such as engineering design and education; both of which have a unique opportunity to promote body size as a consideration for future designers. We have elected to draw on theories from more studied social identities (e.g. disability) because of the relative lack of theory regarding the unique lived experiences of fat people. The purpose of this paper is to understand and identify the barriers experienced by fat people and how these barriers shape their lived experiences. Our work is guided by the research question: What are the lived experiences of fat individuals that impact their day-to-day lives as integral stakeholders in the engineering design community?

To answer this research question, we will be interrogating our own experiences as fat people through the lens of the social model of disability. This model argues that individuals with physical or mental impairments are disabled by society, which subjects these individuals to structural, legislative, and attitudinal barriers and limits their full engagement and inclusion. We used a collaborative autoethnography approach where each author served in the role of a researcher-participant. Grounded in each of our positionalities as fat engineering education scholars and educators but also consumers of engineering design products, we reflected on a set of prompts (collaboratively generated) first individually and then collectively to identify both unique and shared experiences. We conducted a content analysis on these reflections in which we identified the structural, legislative, and attitudinal barriers we have faced. Our findings shed light on the consequences of the lack of discourse around fatness. This includes a discussion on the consequences of underserving this large population by excluding them in the design considerations of the everyday world (e.g. clothes, chairs, airplane seats). The paper concludes with implications for design education.