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Design is a multidimensional activity involving a variety of skills and thought processes, including analytic reasoning, intuition, and creative expression. Learning how to design can be a frustrating and confusing process that some students find difficult to understand. Professors employ a range of strategies when teaching design. These strategies are often based on how their professors taught them with little or no theoretical basis in how students learn. For students, the failure to grasp the process of designing can challenge their willingness to stay motivated and actively engaged in the studio project. The result is less than optimal learning and students that do not achieve their full potential. One important factor that influences design learning is the process of self-regulated learning. Self-regulated learning (SRL) refers to a student's self-generated thoughts, strategies, and goal-directed behaviors. This study examined SRL in landscape architecture design studios in order to find out how students self-regulate their learning and performance on studio projects. Interviews with landscape architecture students were used to answer the research questions. Study findings suggest that landscape architecture students self-regulate their learning on studio projects through a process of engaging in design, then using SRL to address issues that arise during design, then generating more design issues that require additional SRL, and so on. The findings indicate that a student's ability to engage in SRL is based on their understanding of design as a complex set of behaviors and activities. Since students in each year have a different understanding of what designing entails, they use and engage in SRL differently. The findings suggest that high achievement in a design studio is a result of advanced knowledge that comes from the freedom to pursue additional issues beyond the basic requirements of the project. The freedom comes when a student attains the expertise to shift cognitive resources away from learning how to design and redirects them towards risk-taking, personal interests, and learning new information. The study sheds light on how students learn, engage, and self-regulate their learning in design studios and provides design educators with a basis for effective design teaching strategies. / Ph. D.

Industrial Design in China seldom addresses the issue of sustainability in mass production. Failure to incorporate sustainable design as a core principle will result in long term environmental and economic loss for both business and society. This research studies the current Industrial Design educational system in Mainland China and proposes a new educational framework to engage sustainability as a design objective. This study adopts the philosophical perspectives of constructivism, sustainable design theory, critical pedagogy, and systems thinking. Literature related to sustainability is collected and organized and overlaid with educational constraints identified through the interviews with educators, students, and practitioners of Industrial Design in four major cities of Mainland China. Using the grounded theory approach, from these two sources a new educational framework is proposed. The educational framework categorizes courses in a four year undergraduate Industrial Design educational program into four domains: ecological literacy, artistic, technological, and professional. Suggestions for the appropriate timeline, content, and pedagogical approaches for curriculum are also provided. The proposed framework was then critically reviewed Chinese educators that served as feedback for the final proposition. / Ph. D.

Design thinking ability is vital for engineers who are tasked with solving society's toughest sustainable development challenges. Prior research identified that the percentage of design thinkers among freshmen engineering students is greater than the percentage among the general population. However, engineering education's lack of attention to fostering creative ability may cause the design thinking ability of senior engineering students to suffer. The research addressed in this thesis compares the design thinking ability of engineering students across age groups, and compares design thinking ability between the design disciplines of engineering and architecture. To draw design thinking comparisons between these groups, a survey with a nine item design thinking instrument was distributed nationally to freshmen engineering students (n= 2,158), senior engineering students (n= 1,893), and senior architecture students (n= 336). The survey instrument was validated by conducting confirmatory factor analysis on the senior engineering and senior architecture samples' data. The Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test was utilized to statistically compare scores across sample groups. Both the freshmen engineering students (2.80) and senior architecture students (3.30) scored significantly higher on the design thinking scale than senior engineering students (2.59). These results have important implications for engineering educators as engineering education may contribute to a decrease in design thinking among senior engineering students. A lower design thinking score among seniors was consistent across all engineering sub-disciplines and should be of concern to engineering educators, since design thinking skills are critical for the development of engineering solutions to grand societal challenges. / Master of Science / Design thinking is a way of thinking about the design process which places the user at the center of the design. Thinking about design in this way is a vital ability for engineers and other design professionals to develop because it enables them to solve “wicked” problems like sustainable development challenges. Wicked problems are those which are difficult to solve due to the number of conflicting components involved. Prior research has found that design thinkers are more prevalent among engineering students in their first year of study than among students in other majors. However, engineering education does not attribute much attention to the development of creative ability which could cause the design thinking ability of engineering students in their final year of study to be worse than the ability of those in their first year, as well as worse than the ability of students who study other design disciplines like architecture. This study compared the design thinking abilities of engineering students in their final year of study to engineering students in their first year and to architecture students in their final year. The goal of making these comparisons was to explore if engineering education helps or hinders the development of design thinking. A survey with nine questions related to design thinking was distributed nationwide. The data from the survey was collected and statistically analyzed. The results showed that the design thinking ability of engineering students in their final year was significantly lower than the ability of first year engineering students and significantly lower than the ability of final year architecture students. A decrease in design thinking ability between freshmen and senior year must be addressed by engineering educators. The National Academy of Engineers and industry leaders are calling for the development of engineers who are design thinkers, and the results of this paper suggest that some changes may need to occur within the engineering education curriculum to accommodate this need.

This statement gives an overall summary of the aims and achievements of the research work and scholarship carried out by the author during her time at The University of Manchester (and UMIST - now part of The University of Manchester) for which the publications presented give evidence. The research has been about exploring the design process, the activities and issues, and elements involved - from both an industry and student point of view. The publications explore design pedagogy, the skills required by designers and how these might fit into a curriculum for design today.In three parts it summarises the publications presented, reviews the main aspects of design and the current state of knowledge and research in design and summarises the core aspects as distilled from over 36 years practice, research and scholarship.The driver for much of the research undertaken has been to gain a better understanding of the core aspects of design - what key knowledge and skills are required by designers to allow the consistent design of better products and services which enhance the experiences of users. The work presented investigates design and design methods: the activities and processes and the elements involved. It considers responses to designs, the emotional aspect of design - why some designs are preferred over others, why some colour combinations are more desirable, and why repetition is so important to the human psyche. Underpinning the work presented are three research questions. • Are design rules and processes generic for whatever is being designed? • Can a better understanding of design theory and the emotional response to designs ensure a more effective process and thus lead to stronger designs? • Can students be educated to be better design thinkers and ultimately better designers? It concludes that: • 'design' is a process; • design is a problem-solving process and problem-solving is a design process; • for the most effective outcomes a creative and structured approach is required; • this process is based on generic rules and principles which are applicable across all discipline areas; • collaborative/cross disciplinary elements reinforce the concept that there are processes involved that are not unique to individuals or discipline specific; • a greater understanding of the process is of benefit to all individuals and organisations; • any design/problem solving activity will normally result in more than one solution option. The results of the research have informed the author's teaching practice and have been disseminated through publications to benefit the wider education arena. The work presented aims to inform students and design education practitioners.

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