Capturing Design Signatures is a collection of activities intended to address the question, “How might we help students become better able to intentionally engage in a design process, as part of an effort to help them become reflective practitioners of design?”
Most often, engineering students learn to apply an engineering design process and focus more on the design deliverables as tasks rather than artifacts of an ongoing process. The collection of these activities thus leverages self-tracking timeline methods (which we are calling “design signatures”), as seen in Figure 1, to make visible the complexity of a design process. Each tracing of a design process is unique because it displays one implementation of design. Though someone may follow a specific design model, each enactment of that design model is unique. Having an in-action visual of a design process supports individuals to reflect on their understanding of design processes and areas of improvement.
The activities range from short in-class activities to multi-semester tracking of capstone design projects. We have collected design signatures using paper-and-pencil bubble sheets, Google forms, spreadsheets, and the newly-developed Design Signatures app. In each implementation, students have had great “aha” moments about the design process and themselves as designers. We are enthusiastic about sharing these inspirational activities with the larger community.
This resource offers a great variety of ways to reach the same purpose: making design processes visible, and increasing student design awareness.
Below, we provide multiple capture methods. Capture methods are ways to capture design processes, for example by filling out a spreadsheet or by using our Design Signatures App. Students can do activities that allow them to practice a design process and then see their process by using a capture method alongside their activity. We encourage you to use pair a capture method with an activity from our Design Activities collection, or pair it with one of your own activities!
We also encourage you to adapt any of these to fit your needs or even create new ways of using this resource.
Design Signatures AppThis app helps students track their design process on a mobile app or on a desktop website, and creates a colorful visual timeline of their design process stages.
Bubble Sheets This bubble sheet helps students track their design process by pen and paper, by “bubbling in” the dot for the corresponding time and design process stage.
Google FormsThis Google Forms survey helps students track their design process by filling in checkboxes in a survey.
Google SheetsThis spreadsheet helps students track their design process by coloring in cells for the corresponding time and design process stage. Designed to support asynchronous data collection for longer projects.
The Design Signatures in the Wild team began meeting in early 2023. These meetings started as a way for these educators to share the resources they use for their work, overlapping engineering and design, and to brainstorm ways to move forward. They shared a common goal to promote design awareness and reflectiveness in their engineering students.
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