Whole System Mapping for Sustainable Design for Senior Engineering and Non-Engineering Students

This innovative practice full paper presents the implementation of whole system mapping for sustainable design thinking in engineering and non-engineering courses. Sustainable design has gained substantially more attention in both academia and industry as increasingly designers of products and services are expected to consider the longevity and sustainability of their products and services. Whole system mapping entails consideration of the resources, users, product life cycle, environment, and the interconnections of a product or service idea during design. Using the open educational resources, whole system mapping exercises were incorporated in senior engineering Project Management and senior Electrical and Computer Engineering Project Lab courses with engineering students, and a Gulf of Mexico Studies course for non-engineering students as a method to introduce the students to the idea of sustainable design. In this paper, we compared the students' utilization of whole system mapping to help them demonstrate sustainable design thinking in their proposed project ideas. This innovative practice assisted the students with determining resources needed to create their product or service, and whether more sustainable materials/ options could be chosen. The exercise assisted the students in considering the product life cycle from ideation to disuse of the product/service, and how they could incorporate reuse/ repurposing/recycling to extend the life of the product or its parts. The students considered the interactions based on the purpose of the product to incorporate useability in their design. Finally, the students also established connections to the users and where the product/service outputs or outcomes may end up, impacting their environment. Creative ideas were generated both in the interdisciplinary engineering and single-discipline engineering courses at two institutions. Non-engineering teams also brought fresh perspectives to the process with alternative project ideas in one course. This case study represents part of a wider study that includes additional cohorts to study whole system mapping and students' skills development in sustainable design.