Design considerations: Implications of domain expertise

This paper describes how four playground experts and five engineering experts completed a task of designing a playground. The findings, derived from a qualitative coding analysis, showcase the playground experts in this sample considering social contextual factors, paying attention to human actors´ playground use, and relying mainly on professional knowledge. The engineering experts in this sample also paid attention to use of the playground by people and used a combination of professional and personal knowledge as they completed a playground design task. In support of ABET´s goals for the engineering discipline, the research highlights how expertise in a particular domain may be helpful for one´s capacity to also focus on social and human-related elements through the design process. These outcomes aim to support the educational discussion on how to enable engineering students to develop expertise that involves broader design considerations.