Participant observations and recommendations from an integrated design project in architecture and engineering

An interdisciplinary design project was conducted with students in the mechanical engineering and architecture departments at the University of Idaho. In order to offer the multidisciplinary design experience within the available bandwidth of instructors, the project was structured around and integrated into existing courses and resources. Past interdisciplinary product design courses have shown the value of interdisciplinary work in the professional development of students in addition to being effective at developing innovative new products. Descriptions of these courses provide insights on conducting them with regards to team structure, course structure, design process, and other topics. This paper summarizes observations reported from students and instructors involved in this project. Observations highlight challenges in project management, examples of cultural differences between disciplines, approaches to design, specifics of project ownership, and perceptions of level of detail in work products. Based on those observations, recommendations are made to develop and deploy a design process that facilitates the strengths of both disciplines and enables mentor guided project management. In addition, these recommendations will help establish a team culture and work setting that does not violate the culture of either discipline while enabling joint decision making, and address directly the impacts of a domain biased product as the design project focus.