Habit Formation and Entrepreneurially-Minded Learning (EML) in Developing the User-Centered Design Mindset

Abstract

To better help students develop a user-centered design mindset, a weekly activity is introduced into the Human Factors Engineering course that utilizes both the concept of human habit formation [1] and Entrepreneurial Minded Learning (EML) [2]. In each weekly activity, students are required to find a product or system that they think is designed poorly from a user standpoint. The poorly designed product or system examples can be any everyday thing students interact with. Following a predefined template provided by the instructor, students are required to showcase their examples by including photos, the user's goals as well as issues using the product, critiques, and a proposed design solution to address the user's needs. The instructor's main requirement for accepting a student's example is to evaluate whether it satisfies at least one of the three goals of human factors engineering (enhancing performance, safety, and satisfaction). Students share their examples with other students, who are then required to participate in a discussion (in-person or an online forum) and contribute to the proposed solution with constructive ideas or propose a different solution. The critical aspect of this activity is the weekly repetition. The goal of requiring a weekly assignment is to help students form a habit of consistently thinking about users during the design process and be cognizant of users' needs with their everyday products. The activity was experimented with in a Human Factors engineering course. To evaluate the effectiveness of the activity in developing a human-centered design mindset through habitual behavior, two methods were conducted: 1) a self-reporting survey by students, and 2) instructor analysis of the artifacts. Once the course concluded, students completed a survey in which they shared their experience and perception about the assignment. Students believed that the activity was an effective one (89% extremely and very effective, 11% somewhat effective) in developing a human-centered design mindset. Students believed (44% strongly agree, 56% agree) that after participating in the Hall of Shame activity, they became more cognizant of users' needs and their unpleasant experiences. They also believed that thinking about poorly designed products and systems regularly, the activity helped them unleash their curiosity. 89% of students believed that completing the activity helped them think about human-centered design issues beyond the course. This indicates that the activity could contribute to forming habitual behavior. Moreover, the instructor analyzed students' artifacts to assess Entrepreneurial Mindset Outcomes (EMO) including curiosity, connection, and creating value. The results indicated that the students' artifacts presented the EMO items (average percentage of observed occurrence): value creation (58%), connection (45%), and curiosity (42%). This paper will share the motivation and rationale behind creating and proposing such a habitual activity to develop a user-centered mindset in students through Entrepreneurially Minded Learning (EML). The paper also provides the activity instruction, learning objectives, and the instructor's lessons learned in applying the activity in class.