Shaping Mindsets Early: How Engineering Freshmen Are Getting a Head Start on Human-Centered Engineering Principles

A bicycle helmet may seem like a straightforward engineering problem: design something that protects a rider's head. But from a Human-Centered Engineering (HCE) approach, the process starts with a different question: Who will use it, and what do they need from it?

When Murillo Soranso, Associate Director of the Grainger First-Year Experience Program (GFX), first took over GFX, he noted that there wasn’t a base-level understanding of HCE across engineering disciplines. To address this, he partnered with Siebel Center for Design to integrate HCE into Engineering 100.

ENG 100 prepares first-year engineering students at the University of Illinois for college by teaching them study skills, resume building and the University resources available to them. Starting this semester, the course also introduces students to HCE, encouraging students to consider user needs, prioritize safety and revisit their initial ideas throughout the engineering design process.

As the first step of the integration process, Dr. Alexander Pagano, former Engineering Education Lead at Siebel Center for Design (SCD), and Dr. Saad Shehab, Senior Associate Director of Research & Strategic Initiatives, began leading human-centered engineering workshops inside ENG 377 last spring. ENG 377 is the course that prepares Engineering Learning Assistants (ELAs) to teach Engineering 100. This fall, those same ELAs have taken the next step, passing on that knowledge directly to the freshmen enrolled in the course.

Ella Lee, a senior in Bioengineering and head ELA for the department, found that her freshmen students were very open to the concepts, as most of them were just starting to figure out what career path they wanted to take. She said the activity also encouraged students to build on one another's ideas and consider perspectives they might not have initially thought of, demonstrating how engineering design extends beyond technical decisions to the people and communities affected by a product.

“I think that overall, the first-year students are coming into college with a willingness to learn and a willingness to grow,” Lee said. “And I think as engineers, it’s really important to introduce these concepts to them early before they get set in their ways about how they believe things should be designed or how a design process should work.” 

As a starting point, the class introduces students to the concept-mapping process. The students were put into groups and tasked with breaking down a technology or product, such as a bicycle helmet, to understand user needs, safety and functionality in a structured, Venn-diagram-like format.

From there, they expanded their maps to explore how the product addresses human needs, who is involved in its development and how factors such as regulation, accessibility, safety, culture and the economy influence its use and impact on society.

“It was really impressive to see how well the students expanded on these ideas,” Lee said. “I had one group that chose to do a bike helmet, and they made like a massive concept map for it. I was really impressed because they started branching off into talking about like professional skateboarders, the Olympics and all of that sort of stuff.”

Reflecting on her own introductory coursework, Bioengineering ELA Myrthi Subash noted that HCE concepts were historically absent from the foundational Grainger curriculum. She emphasized how rewarding it has been to see these design methodologies introduced right at the start of a student's academic journey.

Subash was in a similar position as Lee’s classmates when she enrolled in ENG 377 to prepare for her role. Having not had much experience with HCE, the class was a starting point for her and opened her eyes to what she was missing. For Subash, teaching this class was more than just an opportunity to impart wisdom to the incoming students but also a learning experience for her own career. 

“It's just so much more helpful to figure out all of these unintended consequences that our products may have, and it's just definitely widened or increased the scope of how I think of things,” Subash said. “I definitely found it helpful, and I've enjoyed learning about it and thinking of everything in such a new way.”

Although this is just the beginning foundation for integrating these concepts, it shows the direct progression of Soranso, Dr. Shehab and Dr. Pagano’s vision: developing a world where Human-Centered Engineering is standard practice rather than a niche concept.

“I think that there's such an emphasis on technical ability and developing your academic skills and building the resume that people kind of get lost in the weeds about it all,” Lee said. I think that it's really important to remind them to take a step back and think about other people for a few seconds…you're doing this all to work with people, do things with people and do things for people.”