Changes to stakeholder engagement approaches throughout a capstone engineering design course

Stakeholder engagement activities are essential for guiding designers' decision-making throughout their design processes. In capstone courses, engineering student designers practice engaging with stakeholders in preparation for their professional careers. However, understandings of (1) how engineering students engage stakeholders to inform design decisions and (2) the factors that lead students to change their engagement approaches over a single project are limited. Our study investigated capstone design teams' interactions with stakeholders at early, middle, and end stages of the capstone course by analyzing interview transcripts and design reports to develop narratives of interactions for seven teams. Comparisons among teams across their capstone course revealed fundamental differences in what drove students toward or away from stakeholder engagement. Our findings highlighted several factors related to design team characteristics and project context that can inform future design pedagogy as well as the development of curricular design projects that provide effective environments for students to practice more human-centered design approaches.