Communicating environmental friendliness through product design and appearance : improving the green appearance of mobile devices

Siirretty Doriast

Developing innovation competences in engineering students: a comparison of two approaches

The gap between industry needs and engineering graduates’ competences is being tackled by project-based courses, which also help to develop key innovation competences to address current societal challenges. Nevertheless, there is limited understanding about what innovation competences are developed through the different types of project-based courses. This study discusses innovation competences development in these courses with the aim of understanding how to better design educational strategies to improve them. Through content analysis, we compare the outcomes of two groups of Telecom Engineering students undergoing a capstone course following a classical product development project approach and a challenge-based course using Design Thinking. Results show that both course types contribute to developing innovation competences. Nevertheless, depending on the chosen pedagogy some competences are developed further. The traditional project-based course demonstrates better results in Planning and Managing Projects. Creativity, Leadership, and Entrepreneurship are more developed through a challenge-based approach combined with Design Thinking.Peer ReviewedObjectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::8 - Treball Decent i Creixement EconòmicObjectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::4 - Educació de QualitatPostprint (published version

Education for innovation: engineering, management and design multidisciplinary teams of students tackling complex societal problems through Design Thinking

[EN] Innovation education involves a different approach both for professors and students. It requires understanding people, technology and business to develop truly innovative solutions that can succeed in the market. The aim of this paper is to analyze the benefits, learning outcomes and self-learning perception about innovation from students participating in an innovative learning experience co-developed by an Electrical Engineering School, a Business School and a Design Institute. Challenge Based Innovation (CBI) is a program created by CERN to host educational projects where multidisciplinary teams of students tackle innovation challenges. The objective is to design solutions to social problems through Design Thinking. It was observed that engineering students, after this learning experience increase their understanding of user’s needs and the relevance of focusing on them when approaching innovation challenges. Also, they improve their ability to ideate break-through solutions thanks to a better understanding of the relationship between people, business and technology due to their in-depth interaction with management and design students. Furthermore, their self-confidence is significantly increased along with their entrepreneurial skills. The level of engineering student’s understating of innovation as a whole is higher with this approach compared to standard design-build projects performed at the Engineering Schools.Keywords: Design Thinking, Innovation, Challenge Based Education, Multidisciplinary projectshttp://ocs.editorial.upv.es/index.php/HEAD/HEAD18Charosky, G.; Hassi, L.; Leveratto, L.; Papageorgiou, K.; Ramos, J.; Bragos, R. (2018). Education for innovation: engineering, management and design multidisciplinary teams of students tackling complex societal problems through Design Thinking. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 1081-1087. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD18.2018.81501081108

Prototyping the future of learning: reflections after seven iterations of Challenge-Based Innovation (2014-2020)

This article presents the reflections of a multidisciplinary team working on CERN’s Challenge-Based Innovation (CBI) since 2014. These reflections on pedagogy and innovation are positioned at the intersection of experiential learning, design thinking and challenge-driven education.Drawing from seven editions of what has become “CBI Fusion Point,” we present our story as an ongoing journey of experimentation with various formats and methods in response to broader shifts in education. Our article contributes to a better understanding of the characteristics and challenges that CBI-like programs pose and the infrastructure and support that they require.Peer ReviewedObjectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::9 - Indústria, Innovació i InfraestructuraObjectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::8 - Treball Decent i Creixement EconòmicObjectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::4 - Educació de QualitatPostprint (published version

Impediments for experimentation in novice design teams

Despite the increasing interest in design thinking, there still is a lack of empirical understanding on what happens when design thinking, or elements of it, are adopted in organizations not accustomed to such approaches. Experimentation is one of the fundamentals of design thinking, and this study explores the impediments for experimentation in four novice design teams taking part in short-term experimentation sprints in a Finnish financial organization. This study adopted a case-study and action research approach and data was gathered through video-recoding and semi-structured interviews. Four central themes that may become bottlenecks when aiming to adopt experimentation in novice teams were identified: resistance to iteration, overlooking the experimentation ideas of others’ and oneself, losing sight of the initial problem to be solved, and a bias towards planning. The study showed that adopting experimentation, in novice design teams requires the team to adopt an appropriate mindset that is open for modifications in the idea and for iteration in the experimentation cycle.Peer reviewe