RETHINKING SKETCHING EDUCATION PRACTICES

Sketching is seen as a fundamental element of a design process which allows ambiguity to be maintained and facilitates the perception of new possibilities, re-interpretation and synthesis. Often it is crucial for exploring human aspects of design. At the same time contemporary engineering design education approaches typically do not include sketching explicitly and there are reports of students’ reluctance to sketch. To explore this contradiction interviews were conducted with three experienced engineering design professionals, focusing on how they used sketching while designing and compared them to student’s sketching practices, identified though sketch output analysis. Results show that sketching is still a part of the design processes of professionals, which is sometimes used in creative ways with computer aided design but is used less habitually in students’ work. This paper discusses potential reasons behind this and potential ways to reintroduce sketching to engineering education.