Fostering Human-Centred Products and Services in Design (OUTPACE)
The product as a technical system remains the core of engineering design. Due to the increasing demands by end users, products are becoming smarter, thereby creating opportunities for innovation, yet sometimes there are challenges and barriers in their use especially by certain strata of the society. Furthermore, the development of smarter products has to be taken into the context of the shift towards product-service business models intended to enable collaborative consumption of both products and services, thereby shifting the cost of ownership and to positively impact the carbon footprint of products. Central to the shift towards product-service business models is the consideration of social, economic, environmental and experiential challenges that influence society. Designers are therefore entrusted to solve these impactful multifaceted challenges by developing products and services. This entails all of the human stakeholders (e.g. policymakers, factory operators, end-user) who interact with the product or service during some part of its existence. Within this context, engineering and design education needs to keep pace with the development of product-service systems, to ensure that prospective engineers are equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills.
Aims
The conference aims to:
- Discuss innovative educational concepts and strategies to help staff, students and graduates address current and future challenges in terms of engineering design
- Share best practices of design and engineering knowledge transfer between academia and industry
- Identify the skills gap between the academic formation of design and engineering graduates and industry needs
- Provide a platform to engage a wide and diverse community of participants and explore the various themes from different perspectives.
Sub-Themes
The E&PDE 2025 conference will bring together students, researchers, professionals and industrialists from the engineering and product design sector to exchange knowledge and experience on sub-themes such as:
- Novel assessment methods for multidisciplinary team-based students’ engineering design projects
- Challenges and opportunities for educators to foster human-centred product-service systems (PSS)
- Exploitation of systems design methods in product service systems education
- Fostering circular economy principles through engineering design educational methods
- Educating students in considering ethical and social issues in product service systems development
- Integrating user experiences in different life phases of products and services
- Innovative approaches promoting sustainability principles in PSS
- Collaborative design education practices fostering multi-user, multi-perspective products and services
- Human-centred product-service system design education in the AI era
- Industry and academia collaborative models for fostering smart products and services
- Migration of students from the private sector to government and NGOs – impact on the development of PSS
We very much look forward to receiving your contributions and meeting you at E&PDE2025 from 11th to 12th September 2025 at the University of Malta, Valletta Campus.