People Designing for People: A One-Week Human-Centered Design Engineering Summer Camp for Pre-College Students

Abstract

This paper describes the design and implementation of a week-long engineering summer camp that engages pre-college learners in human-centered design principles. Students worked in small teams to create and present a viable prototype for a specified user group. The one-week camp engaged students in understanding, ideating, and low-fidelity prototyping. Takeaways from the camp design and implementation are described and possible adaptations to high school science classroom contexts are discussed.

Keywords:

• Human-centered design
• pre-college
• engineering summer camp
• collaboration

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00368555.2024.2314689.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Taylor Tucker Parks

Taylor Tucker Parks (email: [email protected]) (ORCID: 0009-0005-3311-7795) is an engineering education fellow at the Siebel Center for Design. She earned her bachelor’s degree in engineering mechanics and master’s degree in curriculum & instruction from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research primarily focuses on collaborative task design, implementation, and evaluation in undergraduate engineering courses as well as the impact of task collaboration and content on students’ learning outcomes. She currently co-leads the integration of human-centered design principles within select engineering courses across multiple disciplines as well as the development of strategic, design-based learning progressions for engineering programs.

Saadeddine Shehab

Dr. Saadeddine Shehab (email: [email protected]) (ORCID: 0000-0002-1276-1814) is the Associate Director of Assessment and Research at the Siebel Center for Design. He earned his Ph.D in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research focuses on studying students’ collaborative problem-solving processes and the role of the teacher in facilitating these processes in design-based STEM classrooms.