Work in progress — Phenomenographic approach to understanding students' ways of experiencing human-centered design

Human-centered approaches to design contribute to innovations in engineering design and have been shown to increase productivity, improve quality, reduce errors, improve acceptance of new products, and reduce development costs. Understanding the ways in which students understand and experience human-centered design is needed to create effective design learning experiences to develop the skills needed for human-centered design. To address that need, we are conducting a phenomenographic study of students' ways of experiencing human-centered design within the context of “designing for others”. Thirty-three student designers from a variety of academic contexts were interviewed using a semi-structured, open-ended approach in which they discussed concrete experiences designing for a customer or client, and reflections and meanings associated with those experiences. Analysis of the data yielded seven qualitatively different ways in which the students experienced human-centered design, or categories of description. The seven categories of description are logically related and comprise the outcome space. A description of the categories, their differences, and hierarchical relationship will be presented.