Abstract
As the inclusion of users in the design process receives greater attention, designers need to not only understand users, but also further cooperate with them. Therefore, engineering design education should also follow this trend, in order to enhance students’ ability to communicate and cooperate with users in the design practice. However, it is difficult to find users on teaching sites to cooperate with students because of time and budgetary constraints. With the development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in recent years, chatbots may be the solution to finding specific users to participate in teaching. This study used Dialogflow and Google Assistant to build a system architecture, and applied methods of persona and semi-structured interviews to develop AI virtual product users. The system has a compound dialog mode (combining intent- and flow-based dialog modes), with which multiple chatbots can cooperate with students in the form of oral dialog. After four college students interacted with AI userbots, it was proven that this system can effectively participate in student design activities in the early stage of design. In the future, more AI userbots could be developed based on this system, according to different engineering design projects for engineering design teaching.
Highlights
With the rise of the concept of user-centered design, users are becoming the focus of the design process and designers must make an effort to analyze the real needs of product users [1]
After four college students interacted with artificial intelligence (AI) userbots, it was proven that this system can effectively participate in student design activities in the early stage of design
This enables students to increase their understanding of product users, and produce creative design solutions that meet the needs of users
Summary
With the rise of the concept of user-centered design, users are becoming the focus of the design process and designers must make an effort to analyze the real needs of product users [1]. In engineering design education, students must learn how to define target users and understand their use needs; otherwise, they may produce inappropriate design solutions through misunderstanding users [2]. In response to the above-mentioned problem in teaching engineering design, several studies have emphasized the importance of having students cooperate with product users in design education [3]. This enables students to increase their understanding of product users, and produce creative design solutions that meet the needs of users. Applying participatory design in design education can overcome students’ unfamiliarity with users, and allow students and users to jointly define problems and generate design ideas. It is quite difficult to invite users to a teaching site to participate in the design process because of time, budget, location, and other restrictions [5]
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