Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to debate on community engagement and participation in local community festivals and events by empirically analysing the factors which either inhibit or facilitate engagement. The application of the motivation-opportunity-ability (MOA) model to the analysis of community festivals is an important contribution. Design/methodology/approach – Recognising the c...

A study to examine students’ perceptions of the design process was conducted in the freshman/sophomore class ME39D: Designing Technology for Girls and Women at the University of California at Berkeley. The course covered gender issues associated with new product development from a human-centered design perspective. Students worked in multidisciplinary design teams and participated in interactiv...

During the preliminary stages of many engineering design tasks, the underlying search space is unbounded and inexact. Initial decisions are made when information is incomplete and many goals are contradictory. This sort of problem appeared in Catalonia for the identification of appropriate wastewater treatment systems in small communities, as well as for proposing appropriate operational and ma...

A major limitation in traditional class lectures that uses textbooks, handouts, transparencies and assignments is that students often are unable to “experience” user interface design. This limitation can be overcome by using the constructionist approach that allow students to experience user interface design by allowing them to “do” or “construct” so that they can understand and remember. This ...

One of the perspectives is to understand and place sustainable development within broader picture of globalization and paradigm shift. As long as we ‘neatly’ divide education, sustainable development and politics we can discuss them as separate ‘fields’ of work. Globalization is associated with processes, such as internationalization, international relationships, unification and diversity, loca...

Purpose: Although both the job and its broader context are likely to drive motivation, little is known about the specific workplace characteristics that are important for motivation. We present the Workplace Characteristics Model, which describes the workplace characteristics that can foster motivation, and the corresponding multilevel Workplace Design Questionnaire. Design/methodology/approach...