NSF Grant Supports the Development of Contextualized Engineering Design for Better Health

Above. Nurses Noelia Calel (center) and Virginia Xicay Garcia (right) joke with M-HEAL students during a meeting at a public health clinic in Santa Cruz on Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. Calel and Garcia are demonstrating a new stethoscope that electronically records heart-sounds of patients in rural parts of Guatemala and sends them to a Guatemala City hospital. The stethoscope could eventually prevent major complications for infants born with congenital heart defects. Photo. Marcin Szczepanski, College of Engineering, University of Michigan

Does it matter if an engineer understands the context in which a design solution will be employed?

The answer might be an obvious yes. But with more and more processes and products being shared globally, implementing new technologies—from healthcare to clean water to energy and communications—in local contexts is becoming increasingly challenging.

“The successful design of engineered technology depends on a designer’s appropriate consideration of context—the physical, social, and economic environments of the technology’s anticipated use,” says Kathleen Sienko, professor of Mechanical Engineering in the University of Michigan College of Engineering.

But little is known about how and when experienced engineering designers incorporate contextual factors into their designs.

Anyone working in global health knows that new challenges are constantly emerging. Designs that better address user needs are always prized but can be more difficult to actually procure.
—Kathleen Sienko

To help engineers—especially novices in the profession—better incorporate the lived environments of local communities into their designs, a team of University of Michigan researchers has been studying how contextual information informs design decisions throughout engineering design processes.

Through extensive interviews with experienced engineering designers, Sienko and Kentaro Toyama, professor of Information in the University of Michigan School of Information, are exploring exactly how engineers can more fully apply all of the inputs available to them in a design process.

Findings from this work will be compared to previous research with novice engineering designers to develop recommendations for best practices in engineering design generally.

The research involves semi-structured interviews, observations, and document reviews across three engineering design domains—medical devices, consumer products, and information and communication technologies.

“Our results will help us understand which behaviors are transferable across engineering design specialities, levels of experience, and use settings,” said Sienko. “We hope this will lead to better design solutions for local populations in need of solutions to critical health concerns.”

Sienko, Toyama, and Grace Burleson, a PhD student in the College of Engineering, received a pilot grant from the Center for Global Health Equity to collect data on novice engineers. “Context matters, especially in global health,” said Burleson. “It’s well documented that when we fail to incorporate context it leads to design failure.”

Figure created by Grace Burleson

Building on this enabling support, Sienko and Toyama recently received a $440K grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to describe and better understand the use of contextual factors in engineering design.

They will focus on multiple categories of contextual factors that can affect design and design implementation—environmental and infrastructure factors, socio-cultural factors, and local political factors.

Based on Burleson’s preliminary results, novice engineering designers readily consider local climates when designing devices. For example, they aim to select materials that account for local temperature, humidity, and other environmental realities, like high amounts of dust in the air or annual expectations of drought and flooding.

Whenever possible, we recommend using context-appropriate graphics and adjusting for language differences, selecting colors and symbols with meanings appropriate in local contexts, and generally aligning design decisions down to the last detail with local preferences.
—Kentaro Toyama

Novice engineering designers, however, rarely consider how politics can affect their design processes. It is important that designers consider not only what utilities are available locally and how the reliability of local transportation impacts supply and delivery of products. Contextualized engineering design must also consider socio-cultural factors of consequence, including language and education access, local symbols and stigmas, and local aesthetics.

“Whenever possible, we recommend using context-appropriate graphics and adjusting for language differences, selecting colors and symbols with meanings appropriate in local contexts, and generally aligning design decisions down to the last detail with local preferences,” said Toyama.

Finally, say Toyama and Sienko, designers should consider all facets of local and regional politics. “We need to be asking what local initiatives and policies could impact the regulatory processes around the projects we hope to implement. Who are the local stakeholders and how can they be engaged positively as supporters of your project?” Sienko said.

Sienko and Toyama hope their research will lead to a range of innovations in processes and products designed with local environments and local stakeholders front and center.

“Anyone working in global health knows that new challenges are constantly emerging,” said Sienko. “Designs that better address user needs are always prized but can be more difficult to actually procure.”

—Josh Messner