Effects of Multidisciplinary Participatory Design Method on Students’ Engineering Design Process

This study took the ergonomics design course as an example to propose a design teaching model of multidisciplinary participatory design (MPD), and investigated the effects of this teaching model on the engineering design behavior of college students. We used lag behavior sequential analysis to compare the design behaviors of three student groups: a participatory design (PD) experimental group, an MPD experimental group, and a control group. The results of the study show that (1) students in the PD experimental group had 13 significant sequential engineering design behaviors, students in the MPD experimental group had 10, and students in the control group had only seven. The engineering design behaviors of the experimental groups were more diversified than those of the control group. (2) The three groups of students had a small number of significant design behavior transfers in the engineering design process, indicating that the students’ sequential design behaviors between two different design activities were insufficient. We concluded by detailing the pros and cons of using the MPD teaching model based on the results of this study, and hopefully by providing a reference for teaching engineering design.