From a philosophical viewpoint, technological design is about connecting what is desirable with what is technically possible. Technology itself plays a major role in design processes, not only because technology development is what designing is all about, but also since the existing technology at any given point in time frames what is possible to…

It has been acknowledged that global challenges are in the way of delivering responsible innovation, as reflected in the Sustainable Development Goals -- a set of strategic objectives formulated by the United Nations General Assembly, to promote environmentally, societally, and economically-sustainable development. Design higher education has an…

Creativity and problem-solving are 21st-century skills that students must have to respond to the complex world dominated by technology. Teaching activities integrating Design Thinking (DT) have the potential to cultivate individual skills. As future in-service teachers, pre-service teachers need to understand DT so as to be able to use it in their…

Biological examples have been used to increase innovation in design activities and design education. And biologically inspired design has been studied in mechanical engineering using biological functions and principles as source domains. However, there were few studies regarding shape-based biological design in industrial design; furthermore, the…

Since the purpose of architecture is to optimize the physical environment, where specific human activities take place properly and in a dignified fashion, architectural design can never be an absolutely push-button process. Accordingly, architecture is truly interwoven with creativity, which should essentially be enhanced or even acquired. In this…

Engineering thinking enhances real-world learning; it emphasises system thinking, problem finding and creative problem solving as well as visualising, improving, and adapting products and processes. Several studies have investigated how pre-service preschool teachers acquire their knowledge of technology and engineering; however, a clear…

This paper studies the impact of gender on the interest in engineering and technical subjects of the students in the first courses of secondary education. A statistical analysis was carried out, analyzing the use of a free virtual-reality application, developed by the 3M Foundation, which aims to bring these subjects to the students.…

The objective of this paper is to analyze the impact of the factors that stimulate inspiration in the design process. An empirical study is proposed in this paper. Three factors were summarized, including knowledge, knowledge relations and innovative strategies. Representations of these three factors that were extracted from the international…

There is a growing concern for design students to gain basic technological knowledge for design in real practice. While there is abundance of tools for creativity, technical information has never been implemented as inspiration for ideas. In this paper, to answer the demand of creativity tools with real practice, we created magic-based…

While teamwork has been a central concern in engineering education, little research has systematically examined how conflict is managed in engineering teams of students. Socio-constructivism provides a solid base to explain how teamwork can foster innovation through the use of cultural artifacts, such as "boundary objects." The purpose…

Design thinking holds the key to innovation processes, but is often difficult to detect because of its implicit nature. We undertook a study of novice designers engaged in team-based design exercises in order to explore the correlation between design thinking and designers' physical (observable) behavior and to identify new, objective, design…

Two experiments are present to examine the hypothesis that the ambiguity inherent within concept sketches can assist reasoning between different modes of representation, and engage translation from descriptions to depictions. The unstructured, ambiguous figures used as design cues in the experiments were classified as being at high, moderate, and…

Environmental experience can enhance the ideas of design students. Thus, this type of experience may interfere with the influence of design students' cognitive style on creativity. The aim of this study was to examine the influence of environmental experience on the relationship between innovative cognitive style and industrial design students'…

While many career development theories (e.g., Gottfredson, in: Brown SD, Lent RW (eds), Career development and counseling: Putting theory and research to work, Wiley, Hoboken, 2005) posit that occupational perceptions are fundamental for understanding youngsters' career aspirations, research relating school students' perceptions of engineers and…

The present study sheds new light on the knowledge dimensions and processes that occur when designing new concepts and prototypes in higher education. In particular, this study aims to develop the conceptual understanding of activities and processes that help students to gain new knowledge and understanding while designing new products and…