Workshops
ICED 2025 workshops offer an exciting opportunity to engage with experts and explore the latest trends in engineering design. These interactive sessions will deepen your knowledge and enhance your skills. Don’t miss out, fill out the interest form today and be part of the innovative discussions shaping the future of design!
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Tutorial: Collaborative and Inclusive Design with Onshape
Audience: Faculty, Students, Industry
Today’s global workforce requires software systems that enable real-time communication and collaboration for engineering design. This hands-on workshop will introduce attendees to the features of cloud-native CAD that allow educators and students to work together and learn in new ways. We will also share how those same features are changing the CAD industry. Learn how you can prepare students for the future of global collaboration and agile product development.
Whether you’ve used Onshape for years or you have never touched CAD, this session will provide opportunities to learn, collaborate, and share. Following a brief introduction, participants will be given the opportunity to complete small collaborative design challenges with the support of the facilitators. The workshop will also include a demonstration of several groundbreaking features, such as Simulation and Classes & Assignments, that make Onshape the most collaborative, equitable, and extensible CAD platform for educators.
We will also provide plenty of time for questions and discussion.
Organizer: Matt SHIELDS (mashields@ptc.com)
Agile design for hardware
Audience: Industry, Students, Faculty
Agile is a widely used design process for software. It is more challenging for hardware. Here we explore why and what to do about building software/hardware design process compatibility. This workshop is based on consulting and training provided to industry. We will cover the keys to employing agile for hardware design.
Organizer: Dave ULLMAN (ullman@davidullman.com)
ASME Journal of Mechanical Author and Paper Development Workshop: Supporting Emerging Scholars in Mechanical Design
Audience: Students, Faculty
This workshop aims to support PhD students and early-career faculty in developing high-quality research papers for submission to the ASME Journal of Mechanical Design (JMD).
Overview of JMD submission standards, presentations on emerging research topics.
Paper Development and Review: Structured feedback sessions with experienced mentors to help participants improve their manuscripts.
Publication Strategies: Insights on navigating the submission and peer-review process for JMD.
Breakout sessions with mentors for detailed feedback on manuscripts.
JMD-focused discussions, including suggestions on paper structure, methods, etc
Organizers: Tucker MARION (t.marion@northeastern.edu)
Defining and Exploring A New Research Field in Design: Extreme Design
Audience: Industry, Faculty, Students
Extreme Design (XD)—which focuses on addressing issues that lie multiple standard deviations beyond the mean. XD emphasizes the development of innovative, interdisciplinary approaches that can generate exceptional solutions for highly complex, urgent issues. By pushing the boundaries of conventional design, XD seeks to create methodologies and tools capable of tackling the extremes in physical environments, user needs, and societal constraints.
Organizers: Tucker MARION (t.marion@northeastern.edu) and Maria YANG
Expanding Horizons: Academic Career Pathways for PhDs Beyond Research-Intensive Institutions
Audience: Students, Industry
Many PhD candidates are unaware of what it takes to be tenure-track/tenured faculty at a teaching-focused institution. This workshop will help shed light on this career pathway.
In this workshop, participants will gain hands-on experience exploring jobs available at teaching-focused institutions. A select few jobs will be used as case studies and participants will develop application packets for them. Participants will develop these applications only after fully understanding expectations for tenure at a teaching-focused institution.
Organizer: Rahul RENU (rrenu@austincollege.edu)
Design Theory for Transitions
Audience: Faculty, Industry, Students
Design theory deepens the scientific foundations of design and engineering; it bridges the gap with other design professions (such as industrial design) and helps in addressing critical, contemporary innovation issues; providing scientific models of generativity, design theory also contributes to address generativity issues in many disciplines (biology, agronomics, chemical engineering, philosophy, management,…). The symposium will provide some illustrations of these results, in four contrasted streams of research, with a specific focus on Design Theory for Transitions.
Organizer: Pascal LE MASSON (pascal.le_masson@minesparis.psl.eu)
Mind the Gap: Accelerated approaches to perspective sketching: A guiding hand
Audience: Students, Industry, Faculty
Our motivation is to tackle gaps in experience and ability from 1st year Product design students.
This is done through a practical sketching workshop – learning by doing.
Organizer: Paul KENNEA (paul.kennea@ntu.ac.uk)
Design Justice and Ethics: Evaluating Where We Are and Our Visions for Next Steps
Audience: Industry, Faculty, Students
In this workshop, we will complete the following activities: (1) Overview of justice-, equity- and ethics-based work in design fields, including engineering design; (2) Introduce the new DJE SIG to the community and provide a summary of previous community discussions held in the past year; (3) Interactive discussions to gain an understanding of how workshop participants conceptualize justice and ethics in design and what they mean for them in their work; (4) Map out research gaps in the field to support visioning for future work in justice and design, and how ethics can support them; (5) Analyze the intersection between justice-, equity-, and ethics-based work in engineering design (to inform how to approach visioning for the DJE SIG); and (6) Translate this visioning to concrete initiatives and/or activities that the new DJE SIG can lead/organize. These discussions will also contribute to ongoing research in the engineering design space on justice in design.
Organizer: Anastasia KOUVARAS OSTROWSKI (akostrow@purdue.edu)
Collaboration and Constraints: A role-playing game of Systems Design
Audience: Faculty, Students, Industry
The workshop allows participants to experience the communication challenges inherent in Systems Design. Even a simple design problem may seem unsolvable if the necessary information is distributed among a team and not fully available to each member. Therefore, the interactive role-playing game lets participants take the role of collaborative engineers within a sociotechnical system working towards a common goal: designing a (significantly simplified) lightweight vehicle. To achieve this, participants will work in small teams under realistic constraints, including limited communication via text-based platforms such as chat or mail, to simulate the restricted communication habits often found in corporate settings. Teams will face time pressures, conflicting goals, and incomplete information, reflecting the complexity of real-world engineering collaboration. The controlled environment enables participants to explore and evaluate communication strategies, focusing on how requirement formulation and structured interaction influence team dynamics and outcomes: in the point-based mode, target values are specified. In contrast, the interval-based mode provides design freedom to reconcile conflicts of goals. The session concludes with team and plenary discussions to compare results, identify lessons learned, and reflect on the experienced collaboration.
Organizer: Klemens HOHNBAUM (klemens.hohnbaum@tum.de)
How can we define success of a shared mental model in collaborative engineering design teams
Audience: Faculty, Students, Industry
Currently, there is a lack of understanding as to how the factors that affect collaboration impact the development of shared mental models. There lacks consensus on the best approaches to measure, and confidently state that a shared mental model has been achieved within engineering design teams. The community lacks a systematic way to determine this. This workshop will ask, what is the success criteria for a team to achieve a shared mental model? The workshop will be split into two sections, the first will approach the challenge from a systems engineering perspective and will ask delegates to map the factors of collaboration to a systems diagram. We will build upon current research principles to achieve this. The second will focus on the human factors in the system and will ask delegates to share their experience to create case studies of collaboration that lead to successful and unsuccessful shared mental models.
Organizer: Ian EDGECOMB (ian.edgecomb@strath.ac.uk)
Evaluating AI Generated Solutions to Ill-structured Design Problems
Audience: Faculty, Industry, Students
In the workshop we will begin with a 10 minute presentation, introducing participants to ongoing research in the area of generative AI evaluation and open questions. We will then spend 10 minutes presenting the activity to the participants — the details of which are the following: in groups of 5 the participants will evaluate latent user needs that have been generated based on user reviews for the redesign of a product line. Similar to a Turing test, the participants will not know which has been generated by an AI model and which by a human. Alongside the latent user need statement, the participants will also receive an analysis of user behavior from the user reviews, i.e. “80% of users discussed comfort, 40% discussed running, etc.”. The complexity of the latent need domain is that such needs are not readily verifiable, i.e. they need to be utilised in the redesign of the product and further user research has to be conducted to determine whether the latent user need has been successful in leading to increased user satisfaction. As such, how can designers be confident in such generated statements? The participants will analyse both statements and document whether or not the latent need will be successful, and why. The activity will take 25 minutes. We will then spend 10 minutes having each group present their findings and use the last 5 minutes for any final questions/discussion.
Organizer: Ryan BRUGGEMAN (bruggeman.r@northeastern.edu)
Mind the Bias: Understanding, Identifying and Mitigating Cognitive Biases in Design
Audience: Industry, Faculty, Students
We will develop a shared understanding of what cognitive biases are and consider their potential effects on the design process (both positive and negative), explore methods and approaches for identifying cognitive biases in design education and practice, and explore approaches and technological interventions for counteracting undesirable biases to enhance design outcomes. Participants will be first invited to reflect on how cognitive biases manifest in various stages of engineering design. The goal is to determine their relevance and impact on design decision-making and problem-solving. These individual reflections will then be shared and expanded upon through small-group discussions, where participants will compare perspectives, challenge assumptions and work towards a common understanding. Building on these insights, participants will then collaboratively explore methods and approaches for identifying cognitive biases during the engineering design process. The goal is to start defining a shared standpoint for bias identification and assessment, which could potentially also lay the groundwork for self-assessment metrics that designers might use in their practice. In the final activity, participants will examine the role that technology can play to address cognitive biases in engineering design. This includes both established tools (e.g., computational design tools) as well as emerging ones (e.g., Artificial Intelligence). Through this exploration, participants will consider how such technologies might mitigate—or even reinforce—biases in engineering design."
Organizer: Chris MCTEAGUE (chris.mcteague@tum.de)
How is your research area affected by robustness aspects?
Audience: Students, Faculty
1. Short introduction to robustness principles and its potential fields of application
2. Discussion on the different fields of application considering robustness
3. Discussion of the differences in implementation, e.g. considering the different inputs, outputs, objectives and constraints
4. Presentation of the discussion results and identification of similarities and blind spots
Organizer: Stefan GOETZ (goetz@mfk.fau.de)
Design Creativity SIG meeting
Audience: Faculty, Students, Industry
This Special Interest Group on Design Creativity will hold a meeting at ICED 2025 to foster networking and communication among those with a passion and interest in all things related to design creativity.
Through this meeting we intend to promote the Design Creativity SIG by reconnecting with older members and enrolling new members. We would also like identify new activities for the SIG to keep the members engaged with this SIG throughout the year.
Organizer: Akane MATSUMAE (matsumae@design.kyushu-u.ac.jp)
Can Prototypes be Creative?
Audience: Industry, Students, Faculty
Research in design creativity has primarily investigated creativity in ideas/concepts and products. Prototypes are sandwiched between ideas/concepts and final products. Creativity in prototypes has not been explored.
1. Understand views that contribute to creativity, novelty and value;
2. Understand assessment of novelty, value and creativity;
3. Help build creative prototypes;
4. Help assess prototypes
Organizer: Srinivasan VENKATARAMAN (srinivenk@iitd.ac.in)
Sketch Ideation Opportunities and Workflows with AI
Audience: Industry, Faculty, Students
The rapid advancement of Generative Artificial Intelligence has ushered in an unprecedented paradigm shift in design, presenting new opportunities while simultaneously redefining traditional workflows. The acceleration of development within the field necessitates a reconsideration of foundational skills and methodologies. While industrial design has expanded to encompass problem-solving in services and systems, product design remains central to the discipline, with sketch visualization serving as a fundamental tool for conceptual exploration. However, proficiency in sketch-based ideation is a skill that often requires years to cultivate, posing a significant challenge for many designers. This difficulty can become a substantial barrier to participation in conceptual development, limiting opportunities for engagement in form exploration. Within the authors' program, students frequently withdraw from ideation, encountering frustration in the exploratory process and experiencing reluctance to share their ideas due to perceived inadequacies in their sketching abilities. Given the immediacy and accessibility of AI-generated visualizations, what are the broader implications for traditional sketching? How will strategies for product design conceptualization evolve in response to these advancements? Are we witnessing a fundamental redefinition of this core skillset, wherein AI-driven prompting becomes an integral component of the visualization process? This workshop examines the intersection of traditional sketching and AI-assisted ideation, with a particular focus on Vizcom. It explores the essential skills, emergent workflows, and collaborative methodologies that can facilitate the integration of AI into aesthetic character development, thereby redefining the role of sketching in contemporary design practice.
Organizer: Amos SCULLY (aasfaa@rit.edu)
NSF: Engineering Design Research Opportunities (US and International)
Audience: Faculty
Our goal is to introduce current engineering design research opportunities at US NSF for US and International researchers.
A brief overview and introduction will be followed by small “drop-in” discussions between the NSF directors and interested faculty, students and industry.
Our goal is to create stronger awareness of engineering design research opportunities for US and International collaborators.
Organizer: Harrison KIM (harkim@nsf.gov)
Artificial Intelligence X Design
Audience: Industry, Faculty, Students
Assess the current state (AS-IS) and define the future direction (TO-BE) of AI in/for Engineering Design (AIXD) within the community. The Special Interest Group (SIG) aims to identify key challenges, gaps, and opportunities in AI applications for ED by engaging in a structured analysis process leading up to ICED 2025 and beyond.
The AIXD SIG will first define key research questions (Feb-May 2025) and conduct AS-IS analysis through desk research (June-July 2025) to map the current state of AI in Engineering Design. At ICED 2025 (Aug 2025), a workshop with the ED community will discuss the TO-BE state and identify future research directions. The findings will then be synthesized into an AIXD manifesto to guide the field, finalized before DESIGN 2026.
Organizer: Filippo CHIARELLO (filippo.chiarello@unipi.it)
PhD and Graduate Forum
Audience: Students
Organizing a peer-review feedback seminar among graduate students and PhD students with junior and senior experts. In its current form the PhD Forum has been running successfully at alternating DESIGN and ICED conferences since 2012. This event routinely attracts between 20-40 PhD students, as well as bringing together early career an
We believe that this joint effort will be the opportunity to increase the research quality at different levels (e.g., publications, writing applications, pedagogy).d senior academics in the field.
Organizer: Massimo PANAROTTO (massimo.panarotto@polimi.it)
Designing for Care: Exploring Behavioral and Ethical Strategies for Pharmaceutical Return Systems
Audience: Students, Industry, Faculty
The growing environmental and public health risks posed by improperly disposed pharmaceutical products present an urgent but often overlooked challenge for sustainable systems design. Despite the existence of pharmaceutical take-back programs in many countries, public participation remains low due to limited awareness, convenience barriers, and lack of caring motivation. This workshop is motivated by the need to explore how engineering and product-service system designers can better support caring behaviors through ethically grounded, behaviorally informed design strategies. While behavior change is widely acknowledged as a key component of sustainable design, few frameworks explicitly address the role of care ethics and relational responsibility in shaping sustainable user practices. By integrating the COM-B model (a robust framework for behavior change), Tronto’s Five Phases of Care (from political and feminist care theory), and Design for Sustainable Behavior (DfSB), this workshop introduces a multidimensional approach to designing for behavior change—one that considers capability, opportunity, motivation, and the ethics of care as intertwined elements of responsible design. The activity will engage participants in understanding why people do or do not return expired medicine, and guide them through ideating design strategies that cultivate care—for the environment, for others, and for future systems. This aligns with ICED’s commitment to exploring the social, systemic, and ethical implications of engineering design and contributes to the growing conversation around designing for sustainability, responsibility, and human well-being.
Organizer: Yoon Jung CHOI (yjchoi@vt.edu)
Transforming Product-Service Systems: AI-Driven, Resilient and Human-Centric Solutions
Audience: Faculty, Industry, Students
This workshop aims to explore the latest advancements in PSS technologies and methodologies, highlighting how human-centered approach and AI/data driven approach can support the creation of more adaptive, intelligent, and user-friendly systems. By integrating resilience-oriented design principles, these systems can better withstand, recover from, and adapt to unexpected challenges while maintaining core functionalities. By focusing on the integration of AI with human-centered design principles, we seek to push the boundaries of what is possible in product-service offerings, ensuring that they meet both the functional needs of users and the ever-changing demands of modern industries.
Organizer: Yong Se KIM (yskim@tongji.edu.cn)