HUMAN-CENTERED SUPPORT OF EDUCATION IN DESIGN PROBLEM SOLVING

The integration of teaching non-technical (“soft”) skills in engineers’ initial and further education is important, but widely disregarded (e.g. Crawley, Malmqvist, Ostlund & Brodeur, 2007). Therefore a balanced set of support techniques and tools for the decisive creative early phases of product development as well as for subordinate aspects of the design process (planning and documenting; working as a design team) was developed, integrated in engineering students´ regular curriculum, and evaluated. The results are not contrary to the potential utility of the suggested support system.