Welcome! Here are slides you can use to structure your lesson on connecting biases of social norms to design thinking and valuation. This was originally a workshop so there are workshop learning outcomes (LO) and demo class outcomes. Feel free to combine or skip workshop LOs.

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Jump to slide 20 for the actual lesson.

IDETC 2025 Workshop

How Implicit Associations of Social Norms can be Operationalized in Engineering Design Practice and Education

Raising critical consciousness in engineering design through taking & deploying your own open-source Implicit Association Test

Please fill out the consent form

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Plan for the afternoon

Welcome! :)

Introduction�Learning Objectives & IAT

Demo Class�Intro to Design Engineering

Panel Discussion

Wrap-Up

Exit Survey & Zine

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01.

03.

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Please fill out the consent form

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Why this Class? Workshop?

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Workshop Learning Outcomes

Reflect and articulate how implicit gender bias can influence design cognition

Experience the Gender-Design

Implicit Association Test (IAT)

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Design Warm-Up

Think of a technology you use often (e.g. appliances, phone, bus/car, coffee machine, etc.) that you find challenging to use or annoying.

A three-minute brainstorm

1. What is the technology?
2. What is your usage pattern?
3. What exactly is frustrating about it, how does it affect your daily routine?

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Introduce Yourself

• Your name (pronouns)
• Institution, company, org
• Role/position
• Research interests
• Your answer to the warm-up question
• (Optional) what brought you to this workshop?

Pairs/ small groups

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First Participant Questionnaire

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In the case you want to have students take the IAT in class or cover the mechanics of the IAT so students can practice and understand what they’re doing, feel free to include these next set of slides.

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You’ll need a laptop or tablet + keyboard for the next part

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Flower

Insect

Orchid

What will show on your computer screen

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Pleasant

Unpleasant

Joy

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Pleasant

or

Flower

Unpleasant or

Insect

Joy

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Pleasant

or

Flower

Unpleasant or

Insect

Wasp

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Now we’ll take an Implicit Association Test

> See email from ASME IDETC or my website

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Thanks for completing the Gender-Design IAT!

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One word to describe how you felt taking the IAT:

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For example…

Panicky/stressed 😅

Curious/Interested 🤔

Disoriented (brain hurts) 🫠

Confident 😎

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Break

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For the instructor: The following sets of slides are intended to be used in a 50-60 minute active-learning style lecture. Activities include self-reflection, small group activities, large group discussion, and scaffolding for learning about a well-known concept in psychology, but not super standardized in engineering education: implicit bias.

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The next slide has a lesson plan outline that you can edit to fit your own syllabus and curriculum

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Plan for the afternoon

Welcome back! :)

Introduction�Learning Objectives & IAT

Demo Class�Intro to Design Engineering

Panel Discussion

Wrap-Up

Exit Survey & Zine

02.

01.

03.

04.

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Lesson Plan Example: Week 3

Course modality: In-person lecture, with live-online (zoom) options for students who are sick or cannot make it

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What was covered/completed before the current lesson? Help explain where the current lesson fits with what has been done recently in the class.

• This lesson will take place in Week 3 of the term to connect engineering design to cognition. Students will have read about why we should care about implicit biases and why they’re so hard to mitigate and how biases lead to design/solution fixation

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What will be covered in the next lesson/week of class?

• The following week covers the concept of understanding different ways to make technical decisions in the design process

Why teach about social norms in engineering design and implicit biases?

A world that is “safer, more efficient, more inclusive and more sustainable” - ABET

“consider the impact of engineering solutions in global, economic, environmental, and societal contexts”-ABET

Explicit

Implicit

(our focus)

Integrating this material into design education

Open to collaborations for a cross-institutional study :)

Instructions for slides 26-42: These slides were used in a workshop at IDETC 2025. To become a collaborator on the Gender-Design IAT Qualtrics survey, please email kangsa@oregonstate.edu. This will give you admin access to the data.

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As an instructor, there are a variety of ways to bring the Gender-design IAT to your classroom to use as a pedagogical and reflection tool. In the demo class I ran for the workshop, I structured it such that participants took the Gender-Design IAT in class, then after some intro material and reading recap activities, their IAT score was revealed to them, In small groups, they then discussed/processed their thoughts/feelings/IAT results.

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However in a 50 min classroom setting, you may not have time to have students take the test. Instead:

1. You can assign the Gender-Design IAT as their ‘HW’ paired with some reflection questions to capture how they felt in the moment
1. Note: the student doesn’t see their score at the end of the test since it’s run through Qualtrics. You can process the data (R scripts provided) and share them in-class or before class
2. In-class, you can plot the data in a histogram and ask students what they think their score is.
3. You can open with an example of an optical illusion, then transitioning saying that our brains actually make these implicit associations without thinking.
4. Then transition to

ENGR 102:

Design Engineering & Problem Solving

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Week 3: Intro to Implicit Associations & Design Cognition (50 min lecture)

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Audience: 1st year engineering students

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DemoClass

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Today’s Learning Outcomes

• Reflect on how implicit gender bias influences design cognition

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• Demystify and Discuss the HW: Gender-Design Implicit Association Test

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Outline for today

• Reading Recap–Demystifying Implicit Bias
• Questions & Quotes Activity
• HW Recap–How Implicit Biases are Measured
• Small group discussion of IAT experience

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Are squares A & B the same color, or different?

Think – Pair share

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So What is Implicit Bias?

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Implicit bias refers to attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious way, making them difficult to control (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995).

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The Decision lab

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Reading Recap - Questions and Quotes

Quote: “All this should remind us of the phrase “death by a thousand paper cuts.” To integrate all implicit bias–actuated harms over time, we need to know frequency (how many “cuts” per unit of time) and duration (what time period to measure from beginning to end). Depending on the question, duration can be years at a firm, in an industry, in a career, and indeed one's entire lifetime. And frequency is not just one critical judgment every few years when we apply for a job or promotion. Instead, it could be every social, economic, political, and professional interaction.” (J. Kang, 2024)

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Question: Your question here…

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1. Bias is fundamental to human brain function

Friend shaped, but not a friend...

(Greenwald, Banaji, Nosek et al., 1998)

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2. As humans, engineers have biases and blind spots influenced by broader cultural & social group norms

F(x,y,z) = Axⁿ + By^m + Cz^o + D

Personal beliefs (culture)

Media

Education

Identity/

power/

privilege

Objective function of what influences our implicit cognition

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2 (cont.)

Implicit biases shape how engineers think about materials, processes, futures, and user needs and considerations

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3. Gender, as a social structure, is inherently embedded in our belief systems, cultures, hierarchy

(Acker, 1990; De Houwer, 2019; Balsamo, 2011)

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(Ehrnberger 2012)

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Measuring Implicit Associations: the Implicit Association Test

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The Implicit Association Test

The IAT Score

Based on how long it takes a person to sort congruent and incongruent pairs in the test.

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Faster responses indicate a stronger implicit association in your mind

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-2

2

0

“Strong Preference” for Male + Innovative attributes

“Strong Preference” for Female + Innovative attributes

Male + Blue

Female + Pink

Male + Pink

Female + Blue

Class results

Small group discussion facilitation

1. How did it feel while taking the Gender-Design IAT?
2. If you comfortable sharing your score, did it match your self-perceptions?
3. Were social norms ever discussed in design education or practice?
4. How might gender bias show up in your work or other’s work?
5. What’s one takeaway or question you’re leaving this discussion with?

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Break

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Wrap-Up

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Take-Home Items

Zine on how to make your own IAT

Modular Slide Deck

Reading List

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Please fill out the Exit Survey & leave on table ☺

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Thank you!

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Thank You!

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Samantha Kang (they/them)

Ph.D. Candidate

Mechanical Engineering

Oregon State University

kangsa@oregonstate.edu

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