Abstract
This paper presents an examination of teaching contemporary design methods to professionals in highly regulated industries; defined as sectors characterized by extensive government oversight, strict compliance requirements, standardized processes, and formal risk management protocols that significantly constrain operational decision-making and innovation approaches. While design thinking has gained widespread adoption across many sectors, professionals in highly regulated industries often need help with design approaches due to perceived conflicts with evidence-based practices and regulatory requirements. Through a structured series of workshops, we contended with these dynamics while introducing systems thinking and futuring methods to medical researchers and community navigators. The study addresses the unique challenges of teaching design to audiences in highly regulated industries, where traditional methodologies dominate, and resistance to new approaches is common. Our work demonstrates how progressive complexity introduction, futuring, and speculative design methods can effectively bridge the gap between conventional health research practices and evolve beyond superficial design thinking. Our findings contribute to design education theory by identifying key mechanisms for building design capability in regulated contexts. The workshops with biomedical researchers achieved 100% participant engagement and demonstrated the successful adoption of design methods for translational research innovation. This work contributes to our understanding of design education in professional contexts and offers a replicable approach for teaching design to audiences in highly regulated industries.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drslxd.2025.101
Citation
Sarin, J., Ahyed, A., Basapur, S., Shah, R.,and Pino, Z.(2025) Teaching Contemporary Design Methods in Highly Regulated Industries: A Case Study, in Clemente, V., Gomes, G., Reis, M., Félix, S., Ala, S., Jones, D. (eds.), Learn X Design 2025, 22-24 September 2025, Aveiro, Portugal. https://doi.org/10.21606/drslxd.2025.101
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Case Study
Teaching Contemporary Design Methods in Highly Regulated Industries: A Case Study
This paper presents an examination of teaching contemporary design methods to professionals in highly regulated industries; defined as sectors characterized by extensive government oversight, strict compliance requirements, standardized processes, and formal risk management protocols that significantly constrain operational decision-making and innovation approaches. While design thinking has gained widespread adoption across many sectors, professionals in highly regulated industries often need help with design approaches due to perceived conflicts with evidence-based practices and regulatory requirements. Through a structured series of workshops, we contended with these dynamics while introducing systems thinking and futuring methods to medical researchers and community navigators. The study addresses the unique challenges of teaching design to audiences in highly regulated industries, where traditional methodologies dominate, and resistance to new approaches is common. Our work demonstrates how progressive complexity introduction, futuring, and speculative design methods can effectively bridge the gap between conventional health research practices and evolve beyond superficial design thinking. Our findings contribute to design education theory by identifying key mechanisms for building design capability in regulated contexts. The workshops with biomedical researchers achieved 100% participant engagement and demonstrated the successful adoption of design methods for translational research innovation. This work contributes to our understanding of design education in professional contexts and offers a replicable approach for teaching design to audiences in highly regulated industries.