Study on Microcontroller Board Design Planning for Design Education

Several new design tools have been introduced in design education recently with an emphasis on high-level design applications and a technical viewpoint. For example, when computer-aided design was introduced as a design tool, it was used as a communication tool between the design and technical fields, which efficiently changed the product development process. Therefore, microcontroller-type boards such as Arduino have been recently introduced as design tools to teach electronics. However, they are not actively used because of the difficulty met by design students who lack engineering knowledge. In this study, we designed a microcontroller board operating with an application able to control the input/output (I/O) and produced prototypes. The proposed solution eliminates the difficulties associated with the coding stage and can thus be easily used without any special training. It allows quick prototyping of design ideas during a short design workshop, which can increase awareness regarding prototype usability and interest in acquiring additional knowledge among students. We tested the microcontroller board in an educational process, during which student teams were able to quickly develop their ideas through design workshops, build their designs, and express functions of the final prototypes. Through this process, we were able to confirm the validity and suitability of the proposed solution for short electronics design educational programs that enable students to appreciate the role of design in technical applications.