Elicitation and development of product requirements are crucial aspects of front-end design and have significant impacts on future product success. This study sought to better understand how novice designers approach the development of product requirements during a front-end design task. Results showed that the stakeholder validity of participants' requirements and the level of tailoring of the requirements to the design context and stakeholders were highly correlated to the number of distinct information sources used and moderately correlated to participants' dependency on particular information sources. Furthermore, an in-depth exploration of participants' information gathering behavior during the design task elucidated specific strategies and processes that may explain why some participants were more successful than others.

Background: Human-centered design approaches promote and facilitate comprehensive understanding of stakeholders to inform design decisions. Successful engagement with stakeholders is critical to favorable design outcomes and requires skillful information gathering and synthesizing processes, which present unique challenges to student designers. Purpose/Hypothesis: Our study sought to answer the following research question: What factors influence design teams' perceptions of the value of stakeholder engagement during design decision-making?

is currently a Ph.D. candidate in mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on the design of medical devices for resource limited settings, particularly related to the use of design ethnography in developing these technologies. He received his B.

is currently a Ph.D. candidate in mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on the design of medical devices for resource limited settings, particularly related to the use of design ethnography in developing these technologies. He received his B.

focuses on strategies for design innovations through divergent and convergent thinking as well as through deep needs and community assessments using design ethnography, and translating those strategies to design tools and education. She teaches design and entrepreneurship courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels, focusing on front-end design processes. Valuing and engaging stakeholders: The effects of engineering students' interactions during capstone design Introduction and BackgroundDesign is a critical component of engineering students' education and an essential skill in engineering. 1,2 Recently, human-centered design processes have been featured in the design practice literature, because the processes result in usable products that are better able to meet the needs and wants of stakeholders.3,4 Human-centered design directs the designer to focus on the stakeholders affected by the design and the broader context in which the product will be used (as opposed to the technology being developed).5 To implement human-centered design processes the designer needs to interact with or to involve stakeholders in the design process itself in order to obtain a deep understanding of the stakeholders and the future product's context of use.