Leveraging Generative AI to Simulate Stakeholder Involvement in the Engineering Design Process: A Case Study of MSc Team-Based Projects

In engineering education, stakeholder engagement plays a critical role in developing solutions that meet both technical and user-centred requirements. During the 2023/24 academic year, GenAl, specifically ChatGPT, was integrated into an MSc team-based project module to simulate stakeholder involvement. This approach allowed students to explore stakeholder dynamics by using AI to identify relevant stakeholders, generate questions for consultation, and simulate interactions. These AI-driven simulations enhanced students' understanding of stakeholder needs and decision-making processes. However, students' engagement was initially hampered by a lack of prompt engineering skills, which limited their ability to effectively communicate with the AI and extract meaningful responses. This underscores the importance of incorporating GenAl prompt engineering in training engineers of the future. To address this challenge, students were given predefined prompts to guide their GenAl interactions, helping them refine questions for better stakeholder insights. Despite these initial challenges, the use of GenAl helped students appreciate the complexities of real-world engineering problems and fostered a deeper understanding of how to balance diverse stakeholder needs. Preliminary results suggest the need for prompt engineering training and that incorporating GenAl into engineering education can significantly enhance students' ability to critically evaluate and integrate feedback into their designs. Future research will explore incorporating human stakeholder engagement methods, alongside prompt engineering training, to further enhance learning outcomes and compare the impact of AI versus human involvement. This work contributes to ongoing discussions on the role of GenAl in education.