ABSTRACT
With the rise in Design Thinking popularity and the market asking increasingly for engineers able to engage in creative problem solving, Design Thinking is being progressively incorporated into engineering curricula. However, from our own experience and from what has been reported by other authors, Design Thinking can be easily compromised when some of its core elements are left out of consideration. Prompted by the conference theme, we challenged ourselves to explore Proximity issues frequently occurring in the process of teaching and learning Design Thinking. Playing with different meanings of the word, we coin and describe four possible Proximity issues: Contiguity, Immediacy, Inability to Zoom Out and Attachment. The presented case study context is a Design Thinking module lectured to engineering students from a Portuguese University. Students' perceptions regarding the four Proximity issues were indirectly collected through an online questionnaire, complemented by content analysis of students' essays. Results from two classes attending the module confirm at this stage these four Proximity questions effectively exist when teaching Design Thinking to engineering students, requiring special attention from educators. While recognizing the merits of Design Thinking programs as part of engineering education, the presented work intends to signal evidence that a cautious approach must be taken, for these programs to be effective. In further stages it is intended to expand this analysis to include a larger number of students and to explore possible strategies to prevent and/or overcome Proximity issues.
