The following are recent highlight examples of key research projects in the Design Science program:
Context Matters: Advancing Design Science Through Practitioner Insights
Former doctoral student Grace Burleson and co-advisors Professors Kathleen Sienko (Mechanical Engineering) and Kentaro Toyama (School of Information) investigated how experienced engineering designers integrate the physical, social, cultural, and economic environments of a product’s intended use into their design processes. While context is widely recognized as critical to the success and sustainability of engineered technologies—particularly in global and resource-limited settings—little empirical evidence has documented how and when practitioners incorporate these factors in real-world projects. Through extensive semi-structured interviews, case studies, and qualitative analysis across domains such as medical devices, consumer products, and information and communication technologies, the team developed a refined classification of contextual factors, along with strategies for gathering, synthesizing, and applying contextual information throughout the design process.
This work not only provides a deeper understanding of the nuanced ways that context influences design decisions, but also offers practical recommendations for both novice and experienced designers. For early-career engineers, these findings can accelerate learning by illustrating effective methods for incorporating context from the start of the design process. For seasoned practitioners, the research identifies transferable best practices that can enhance product relevance, adoption, and long-term impact across diverse settings. Together, these insights strengthen the foundation of design science by highlighting the essential role of context in creating technologies that truly meet stakeholder needs.
Designing for Health Equity: Addressing Disparities Through Human-Centered Innovation
Current doctoral student Lauren Wojciechowski’s health equity research, co-advised by Professors Julia Kramer (Mechanical Engineering) and Elizabeth King (Public Health), focuses on designing and evaluating healthcare interventions that address disparities in access, quality, and outcomes. Their work applies human-centered and equity-focused design methods to understand how structural, cultural, and systemic factors influence health, particularly in underserved and marginalized communities. By engaging patients, healthcare providers, and community stakeholders throughout the design process, they ensure that solutions are contextually relevant, culturally responsive, and sustainable.
This research spans projects in areas such as maternal and reproductive health, chronic disease management, and access to medical technologies in low-resource settings. Through mixed-methods studies, including qualitative interviews, participatory workshops, and quantitative evaluations, their work generates actionable insights that inform policies, improve service delivery, and guide the development of equitable health innovations. Together, these efforts aim to close health gaps, advance social justice in healthcare, and promote well-being for populations historically excluded from high-quality care.
Intentional Representation: Elevating Equity and Accuracy in Design Processes
The research by former doctoral student Laura Murphy and co-advisors Professors Shanna Daly and Colleen Seifert examined how people are intentionally represented during design research and the impact these representations have on the design process and resulting solutions. In many design projects, especially those involving diverse or marginalized user groups, choices about how individuals and communities are portrayed—in personas, user stories, case studies, or other artifacts—can shape designers’ perceptions, priorities, and decision-making. This work investigated the strategies and frameworks that guide these portrayals, with attention to accuracy, inclusivity, and respect for participants’ lived experiences.
By analyzing real-world design projects and engaging with practitioners, the researchers identified best practices for ethically and authentically representing people in ways that avoid stereotypes, highlight user agency, and preserve contextual nuance. The findings offer practical guidance for ensuring that design research outputs not only inform technical decisions but also reinforce equity, empathy, and trust between designers and the communities they serve. This work contributes to a growing body of knowledge on socially responsible and human-centered design.
Advancing Engineering Design: Insights into Communication and Collaboration Across Fields
The research by former doctoral student Anna McGowan and co-advisors Professors Panos Papalambros and Wayne Baker explored how interdisciplinary interactions shape research, development, and early-stage design in large engineered systems. Such projects—often involving aerospace, energy, transportation, or infrastructure—require the coordinated expertise of professionals from multiple disciplines, each bringing different priorities, vocabularies, and problem-solving approaches. This work investigated how communication patterns, decision-making processes, and organizational structures influenced the integration of diverse perspectives in the formative stages of system design.
By combining case studies, interviews, and network analysis, the researchers identified factors that enabled effective interdisciplinary collaboration, such as shared goals, mutual understanding of constraints, and early alignment of technical and non-technical requirements. The findings offer actionable strategies for fostering productive interactions, reducing misalignment, and accelerating innovation in large, complex engineering projects. This research advances design science by highlighting the social and organizational dimensions of engineering design, alongside its technical challenges.
Designing Voice Systems to Bridge Belief Gaps and Combat Misinformation
Current doctoral student Mustafa Naseem, in collaboration with co-advisors Professors Panos Papalambros and Kentaro Toyama, is advancing research on how to effectively engage individuals with information that challenges their existing beliefs on speech-based digital platforms. Building on prior work in designing speech systems to disseminate accurate health information, this research explores strategies to encourage open dialogue and promote the spread of trustworthy content. The work integrates insights from human-computer interaction, health informatics, and social psychology to better understand how users process and respond to conflicting information delivered through voice interfaces.
By focusing on the intersection of technology and human behavior, this research aims to create speech-based systems that not only share vital health information but also foster meaningful engagement with diverse viewpoints. The goal is to improve public understanding and counter misinformation by designing platforms that respect user perspectives while encouraging critical reflection and informed decision-making. This work advances design science by integrating interdisciplinary approaches to tackle complex social challenges, demonstrating how thoughtful system design can influence behavior and promote healthier information ecosystems.
Designing Adaptive Multi-Mode Products with Pneumatic Technologies
Former doctoral student Koray Benli’s research, co-advised by Professors Diann Brei and Jonathan E. Luntz, focused on designing structurally adaptable multi-mode products using emerging constrained layer pneumatic system technologies. Conventional products often provide fixed functionalities that cannot dynamically adjust to users’ changing needs, while modular designs tend to grow bulky and complex with increased functionality. Koray’s work developed a novel pneumatically activated architecture that enables products to transform their structural configurations on demand, delivering lightweight, space-efficient, and cost-effective multi-mode solutions. His dissertation introduced a hierarchical functional and architectural decomposition framework that systematically connects system architecture, functionality, and operation, enabling innovative design strategies for adaptable products that can evolve through incremental or radical innovation.
Through detailed case studies on internally tiled pneumatic textiles, Koray investigated the relationships between architectural features and system performance, validating predictive models and algebraic methods for tailoring product functionality to specific contexts. This research advances design science by providing new tools and methodologies for engineering multi-mode products with enhanced adaptability, fostering richer user-product interactions and expanding the possibilities for responsive, context-aware design.
Understanding Novice Designers’ Prototyping Practices
Former doctoral student Michael Deininger’s research, co-advised by Professors Shanna Daly and Kathleen Sienko, explored how novice designers use prototypes throughout the engineering design process to engage stakeholders and gather critical feedback. His work investigated the diverse roles prototypes play—not just as physical artifacts but as tools for communication and collaborative problem-solving. By studying how prototype types, formats, and fidelity influence stakeholder input, Michael’s research identified best practices for using prototypes strategically to elicit richer, more actionable feedback that can improve design outcomes.
A key focus of this research is understanding how prototypes support designers in navigating complex social and technical contexts, especially in global and cross-cultural settings. Michael examined how different stakeholder groups respond to various prototype forms and how this affects designers’ decision-making. This work advances design science by providing empirical insights and guidelines on effective prototyping strategies that help bridge gaps between designers, users, and other stakeholders, ultimately fostering more inclusive and responsive design processes.
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