ENGINEERING DESIGN IN THE CREATIVE AGE

McMaster University has initiated a new graduate program in engineering practice aimed at educating tomorrow’s engineering design leaders. Graduates of engineering schools are well versed in technology and its application but must acquire new skills and competencies in innovation and design in order to become global leaders in their industries. The leading thinkers in engineering design innovate continuously to succeed in the global marketplace. This paper discusses the value and importance of teaching and learning human-centred design thinking for engineering graduates. Achieving significant and continuous innovation through design requires looking beyond current systems design practices. Engineering educators must adapt new ways of thinking, teaching, and learning engineering design from other disciplines. This paper discusses the modes of engineering thinking and how they differ from those of contemporary innovators and examines how a human-centred approach to design can replace approaches that consider human values and ethics as constraints to the design. The authors will discuss current efforts to insert the teaching and learning of a human-centred approach to engineering design at the graduate level in an engineering curriculum. The aim of the curriculum is to introduce students to collaborative, inter-disciplinary, human-centred thinking, with a strong emphasis on generating continuous innovation through creativity.