Empathic approaches in engineering capstone design projects: student beliefs and reported behaviour

Abstract

Engineering design decisions have non-trivial implications, and empathic approaches are one way that engineers can understand and translate the perspectives of diverse stakeholders. Prior literature demonstrates that students must develop empathic skills and beliefs that these skills are important to embody empathic approaches in meaningful ways. However, we have limited understanding of the relationship between students’ beliefs about the value of empathy in engineering decision making and how they describe their reported use of empathic approaches. We collected qualitative data through interviews with ten undergraduate engineering students in capstone design. We found that our participants espoused a belief that empathic approaches are valuable in engineering design decisions. However, while students considered diverse perspectives when describing how they made design decisions, their reported behaviour during design decisions did not demonstrate translation of their empathic understanding. Based on these findings, we provide recommendations to educators and researchers.