Design interviews with stakeholders are an important source of information that engineering designers can use to identify stakeholder needs and develop solutions that meet stakeholder requirements. However, engineering students often struggle to conduct effective design interviews. In this study, we investigated changes in engineering students’ interview approaches after engaging with a novel pedagogical intervention known as the Hybrid Learning Block model. We identified specific differences in interviewing behaviors between pre-block and post-block interview tasks with proxy stakeholders. Compared to pre-block interview tasks, participants’ post-block interviewing behaviors and approaches aligned more closely with recommended interviewing practices from literature. Participants more frequently exhibited behaviors related to deep exploration of stakeholder perspectives and demonstrated more advanced phrasing of questions. In addition, participants structured their post-block interview tasks in ways that more closely aligned with recommended practices, for instance by including more comprehensive interview introductions and employing a more diverse array of questioning techniques. Our findings also suggest improvements that we might make in future iterations of the hybrid learning blocks, such as including content more specifically tailored to addressing common student interviewing mistakes. Students can benefit from scaffolded, evidence-based ways to improve their design interviewing skills, such as the hybrid learning blocks, that can ultimately support them in developing more appropriate design solutions.

DOI: 10.18260/3-1-1153-36037

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Elizabeth Strehl

Robert Loweth

Shanna Daly