This study set out to identify emerging trends in advancing engineering for sustainable development, supporting the engineering workforce to address wicked problems, and strengthening pathways between engineering education, industry, and policy. The following question guided this work: What are the emerging factors impacting the future of global sustainability efforts within engineering, and how can these be amplified to increase the impact of engineering for sustainable development? Using an adapted Delphi method with surveys, focus groups, and member-checking interviews, we hosted the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) 2022 Engineering Global Development (EGD) Stakeholder Summit. The summit convened industry leaders, innovators, and academics to explore emerging factors impacting the future of global sustainability efforts in engineering. This manuscript synthesizes emerging trends and proposes recommendations for engineering, particularly in the specific focus area of engineering for sustainable development (e.g., ‘humanitarian engineering’, ‘global engineering’). Critical recommendations include the adoption of emerging cultural mindsets, which include: (1) take an interdisciplinary and multi-stakeholder approach, (2) consider dynamic and interconnected systems, (3) increase humility and intercultural competence, (4) prioritize diversity and inclusion, (5) increase localization and center community perspectives, (6) challenge the perception that engineering is neutral, and (7) broaden the goals of engineering. Ultimately, this study highlights pathways forward for the broader engineering community to more effectively contribute to advancing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Incorporation of contextual factors into design processes is important for successful engineering design outcomes. Through document analysis and semi-structured interviews, we investigated the types of contextual factors incorporated by novice engineering designers and their approaches during design processes. Our findings demonstrated that participants primarily considered technical and institutional contextual factors across all design stages, informed largely by contextual observations and interviews with stakeholders. Socio-political contextual factors were less frequently considered. We also found that a broader set of contextual factors were incorporated when projects were set in unfamiliar contexts. And, contextual factors that could be easily quantified were more readily applied to design decisions. We suggest that there are opportunities for more intentional approaches to incorporating contextual factors throughout design processes.

Using prototypes to engage stakeholders during front-end design activities is crucial for successful design outcomes. Compared to prototyping that is used for iterative refinement during back-end engineering design activities, prototyping that informs problem definition, requirements and specifications development, concept generation, and other front-end design activities is understudied. To identify patterns in prototyping strategies for engaging stakeholders during the design front end, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 26 design practitioners across three product design domains: automotive, consumer products, and medical devices. Seventeen strategies evident across the collection of practitioners were used in generally consistent ways, with some variation based on context, e.g., project scope, stakeholders engaged, and the stakeholder interaction situation. Twelve of those 17 strategies were used by industry practitioners across the three domains, and five of those 17 strategies were used by practitioners from the medical device domain and either the automotive or consumer products domain. The descriptions and in-context examples of prototyping strategies used to engage stakeholders during front-end design can guide the design strategies of both experienced and novice designers.

The engineering profession is increasingly recognizing that engineers’ abilities to utilize a systems perspective and collaborate on multidisciplinary teams are critical professional competencies required to solve contemporary engineering challenges. Understanding context, including but not limited to social and cultural context, is one aspect of systems thinking that is important to effective problem-solving, yet such training is not yet standard in our engineering curricula. Humanitarian engineering-related capstone design projects offer both hands-on and field opportunities to integrate social and cultural appropriateness into a formal engineering design curriculum. Over the 2015-2016 academic year, Oregon State University offered a capstone project aimed at optimizing and implementing an improved soap-making process for TERREWODE, a non-governmental organization in Uganda. The ultimate goal of this soap-making project was to expand income-generating opportunities for victims and survivors of obstetric fistula. The project consisted of a six-month, on-campus design phase and a three-week field implementation and research trip in Soroti, Uganda. Six Social Justice (SJ) criteria were used in assessing project context and developing design requirements. Throughout the design phase, experimental testing drove the majority of design decisions. During field implementation and research, the three-student capstone design team worked closely with TERREWODE and their members to optimize the process, understand cultural conditions, and recommend options for potential local solar power systems.

Incorporating contextual factors into engineering design processes is recommended to develop solutions that function appropriately in their intended use contexts. In global health settings, failing to tailor solutions to their broader context has led to many product failures. Since prior work has thus far not investigated the use of contextual factors in global health design practice, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 experienced global health design practitioners. Our analysis identified 351 instances of participants incorporating contextual factors in their previous design experiences, which we categorized into a taxonomy of contextual factors, including 9 primary and 32 secondary classifications. We summarized and synthesized key patterns within all the identified contextual factor categories. Next, this study presents a descriptive model for incorporating contextual factors developed from our findings, which identifies that participants actively sought contextual information and made conscious decisions to adjust their solutions, target markets and implementation plans to accommodate contextual factors iteratively throughout their design processes. Our findings highlight how participants sometimes conducted formal evaluations while other times they relied on their own experience, the experience of a team member or other stakeholder engagement strategies. The research findings can ultimately inform design practice and engineering pedagogy for global health applications.

It is well known that community engagement is critical for the success of humanitarian engineering (HE) projects. Short-term HE projects require special attention to community contexts and capacity to ensure solutions solve particular needs and can be maintained long after implementation. This manuscript contributes to our team's long-term goal of improving community engagement across all stages of professional volunteer led short-term HE projects, including the development of more granular recommendations and metrics for community engagement evaluation and volunteer accountability. In this study, we evaluated 43 projects that received grants in 2022 from a large HE organization for groups of volunteers to implement short-term projects. While most projects (70 ^% ) engaged communities through training sessions after implementation, our analysis identified critical gaps in community engagement during early project stages, and only three projects (7 ^% ) described engaging with their community throughout all stages. We identified an opportunity for volunteer teams to expand the community members and stakeholders they engage during a project, as most projects focused on one community partner rather than considering those who may be directly impacted by the project. Overall, our findings indicate critical opportunities for support and incentives for professional volunteers to increase community engagement during HE projects.