UML in Action: Integrating Formal Methods in Industrial Design Education

When designing product behavior, the designer often needs to communicate to experts in computer software and protocols. In present-day software engineering, formal specification methods such as the Universal Modeling Language have been widely accepted. Teaching design students these formal methods is non-trivial because most of design students often have difficulties in programming the behaviors of complex produces and systems. Instead of programming, this paper presents a technique, namely “acting-out”, for design students to master the formal methods. The experience shows that acting-out not only worked out very well as a teaching technique, but also showed the potential for bridging the processes of industrial design and software engineering.