Incorporation of contextual factors into design decisions 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 capstone design projects. Our findings demonstrated that novices primarily considered technical and institutional contextual factors across all design stages, informed largely by contextual observations and interviews with stakeholders; sociopolitical contextual factors were less frequently considered. A broader set of contextual factors were incorporated into design decisions for projects set within unfamiliar contexts. Contextual factors that could be easily quantified were more readily applied to design decisions. We suggest that there is room for more intentional approaches to incorporate contextual factors iteratively throughout design processes.