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Educating Engineering Systems Designers: A Systems Design Competences and Skills Matrix

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Handbook of Engineering Systems Design

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Abstract

This chapter provides a summary of key literature to argue that there has been a gradual change in emphasis in design education, from technical projects, to systems engineering and more recently, the need to tackle complex socio-technical engineering systems problems.

In the 1970s, attention was focused on technical or engineered systems, recognising that by only focusing on small sub-systems, problems emerge later with systems integration. In the 1980s, soft-systems methodology recognised that engineered systems are used by people and this critical dimension had not been given sufficient attention. More recently, there is a renewed call for designers to pay attention to increasingly complex socio-technical problems. These problems are characterised by being dynamic (different parts change at different rates), non-linear (do not follow cause and effect relationships), emergent, often of a large scale (e.g. societal transformation), containing significant social and technical complexity and having high levels of unpredictability.

There is growing awareness of the need to equip engineering design students with the skills and competences that are necessary to tackle these complex socio-technical challenges. To help address this need, an original ‘systems design competences and skills’ matrix for engineering systems design is proposed. This matrix seeks to help design students and educators consider the boundaries around an individual design brief and to consider how a series of design briefs combine to deliver a balanced programme of design education. The matrix is illustrated through six case examples from university engineering programmes, each of varying levels of complexity.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    James Moultrie

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  1. James Moultrie
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Correspondence to James Moultrie .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Technology Management and Economics, DTU - Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark

    Anja Maier

  2. Department of Technology Management and Economics, DTU - Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark

    Josef Oehmen

  3. Philosophy Department, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Pieter E. Vermaas

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Moultrie, J. (2022). Educating Engineering Systems Designers: A Systems Design Competences and Skills Matrix. In: Maier, A., Oehmen, J., Vermaas, P.E. (eds) Handbook of Engineering Systems Design. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81159-4_28

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