Work in progress - activities that capstone teams use to create innovative design in bioengineering

Engineering design is a social and a cognitive process: an opportunity resolved though a question-driven, divergent progression that builds upon knowledge about clients and users, needs and specifications, technology and market assessments, and other constraints. In order to educate engineers with the ability to be innovative designers, we need to better understand the complicated processes engineering students utilize when developing innovative designs. In this research we are evaluating how engineering students navigate the process of design from initial conception to product and determine the extent that resultant innovative designs traverse the entire process. To do this, we are employing on-line reflective journals via an exhaustive list of design process elements that span the five primary stages typically found in product development. Specifically, we are studying nine (four person teams) biomedical engineering design capstone projects at the University of Pittsburgh; hence we are able to study student design processes ldquoin action.rdquo Qualitative pattern analysis is being conducted on the reflective journals coupled with the quantitative analyses of the periodic questionnaires. In this work-in-progress, we investigate the differences in the student groups with regards to their first term progress and the various strategies/activities they employed.