COMBINING COLLABORATIVE USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN WITH CROWD ENGINEERING: A PROBLEM-BASED LAB COURSE FOR (UNDER-)GRADUATE STUDENTS

Abstract

This paper proposes a university course centred around a problem-based laboratory called “Crowd Engineering (CE)”. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, collaborative work had to be moved predominantly into the virtual space. Thus, the need for virtual collaborative work in teaching increased significantly. CE is a joint remote collaboration by two academic institutions working together in a transfer-oriented, publicly funded project. In the course, design and product engineering students learnt to cope with today's complex problems. They acquire skills to think beyond subject and system boundaries and are equipped with these job-related qualities already during university education by solving a crowd-sourced real-world task. Students worked with various tools to arrive at an initial design proposal that is supposed to be implemented in a future physical prototype. This paper describes the collaboration context of both university partners, concept development and implementation of the laboratory course and lessons learned from the collaboration. © PDE 2021.