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Open research questions in Design Education and Practice

251 gap statements mined from Design Education and Practice papers in our 7.9M-paper local library, which holds 3,019 papers on the topic — drawn mostly from each paper's own stated research gap, future-work, challenge and limitation notes, and its abstract. The ones listed below are a selection still marked open; each names the study that raised it, with a DOI link where the paper has one.

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What the literature leaves open

  • The study highlights the need for graduates to develop skills that can be applied to new situations or perspectives. The paper notes the complexity of problems being investigated and the need for multiple perspectives to be considered.

    Design Thinking in Higher Education Case Studies: Disciplinary Contrasts between Cultural Heritage and Language and Technology · 2024 · DOI

  • Many studies have identified a gap between graduates' skills and capabilities and the demands of the work environment in an increasingly globalized society. Graduates often lack the strategies to organize and apply their specific skills to new situations or perspectives. The paper argues that design thinking can help bridge this gap.

    Design Thinking in Higher Education Case Studies: Disciplinary Contrasts between Cultural Heritage and Language and Technology · 2024 · DOI

  • Further research could investigate the impact of integrating elements from both sponsorship models on student learning outcomes. A study could examine the effects of industry sponsorship on student professional skills development in different academic disciplines. Research could explore the relationship between faculty sponsorship and teamwork abilities among students in Capstone Senior Design Projects.

    Multidisciplinary Capstone Senior Design Projects: A Comparative Analysis of Industry–Sponsored and Faculty–Sponsored Projects Using Comprehensive Performance Metrics · 2024 · DOI

  • The study highlights the need to understand the dynamics of student collaboration within multidisciplinary Capstone Senior Design Projects. The research identifies a gap in the literature regarding the impact of industry and faculty sponsorship on project outcomes. The study seeks to address this gap by comparing industry-sponsored and faculty-sponsored projects.

    Multidisciplinary Capstone Senior Design Projects: A Comparative Analysis of Industry–Sponsored and Faculty–Sponsored Projects Using Comprehensive Performance Metrics · 2024 · DOI

  • The need to find ways to enhance the students' understanding of structural concepts.

    Application and Assessment of an Experiential Deformation Approach as a Didactive Tool of Truss Structures in Architectural Engineering · 2024 · DOI

  • The need for HE students to gain the essential knowledge and skills beyond disciplinary expertise in isolation, to promote sustainable development now and in their future careers. The lack of effective learning experiences that integrate real-world circular economy challenges into learning activities.

    Experiential Learning for Circular Operations Management in Higher Education · 2024 · DOI

  • The gap in engineering education is the lack of effective guidance and scaffolding for learners in online education. The gap in simulation-based learning is the need for precursors or companions to guide learners in making predictions and justifying their design decisions.

    Simulation-Based Learning and Argumentation to Promote Informed Design Decision-Making Processes within a First-Year Engineering Technology Course · 2024 · DOI

  • This effect can hinder creativity and has not yet been explored in relation to GenAI, even though it is of major importance for understanding creative issues.

    Switching Perspectives: Enhancing Generative Artificial Intelligence's Creativity, by Humans, With Design · 2025 · DOI

  • However, how to embed a new language into a product characterized by an established design has not been addressed in the past.

    When products speak differently: Designing new languages for established products · 2024 · DOI

  • Future research should investigate the implications of artificial intelligence for design practice and education. Future research should explore the potential of hybrid workflows to enable temporal elasticity in collaboration.

    Creativity and artificial intelligence in design · 2026 · DOI

  • The study highlights the need for a functional taxonomy of artificial intelligence in design.

    Creativity and artificial intelligence in design · 2026 · DOI

  • Further studies can explore the impact of ECD on design thinking in different contexts. Research can investigate the effectiveness of community advocacy and policy formulation in increasing access to ECD programmes. Studies can examine the role of ECD in promoting critical thinking and innovation.

    Early Childhood Education as an Instrument for Design Thinking: Cases and Examples · 2026 · DOI

  • The lack of understanding of the role of ECD education by some parents and guardians. The limited access to ECD programmes in low-income rural communities. The need for community advocacy and policy formulation to increase access to ECD programmes.

    Early Childhood Education as an Instrument for Design Thinking: Cases and Examples · 2026 · DOI

  • However, even if the underlying complexities of topics with higher or lower element interactivity are not fully understood, mapping can inherently highlight points at which students are likely to experience high cognitive load or where further scaffolding is required.

    Teaching technical knowledge in architectural education: a framework for designing and reflecting on teaching activities · 2026 · DOI

  • The Design Challenge framework identifies seven key elements for initiating AI innovation but does not specify how to evaluate or iterate on design challenges once formulated; no study in this set measures whether design challenge quality predicts downstream AI product success or how teams should refine challenges during development.

    The Anatomy Of A Design Challenge For Initiating Ai Innovation · 2026

  • Although prior projects have combined CAM-based design methods with clay printing, or applied GenAI in other areas of digital fabrication, they have not explored this particular hybrid workflow.

    ClayScape: A GenAI-Supported Workflow for Designing Chinese Style Ceramics with Clay 3D Printing · 2026 · DOI

  • Future work should examine these dynamics across varying levels of AI familiarity and prior orientation, and could explore how targeted resources might deepen designers’ comprehension of AI’s capabilities and constraints.

    How Designers Envision Value-Oriented AI Concepts with Generative AI · 2026 · DOI

  • Speculative design has gained traction in theory, but its methodological foundations in the context of industrial design practice remain underdeveloped. The study aims to address this gap by exploring a hybrid methodological approach to speculative industrial design.

    Speculative Industrial Design with Reflective Virtual Prototyping: A Hybrid Approach to Research Through Design and Heuristic Inquiry · 2026 · DOI

  • There is a need to understand how AI interacts with conceptual design thinking.

    Human-AI Collaboration in Architectural Design: A Comparative Analysis of Conceptual and Computational Form Generation · 2026 · DOI

  • Validated and tests shall be developed for triangulation and to provide quantitative evidence of students' mindset development. Further, the retention of mindsets can be elicited through longitudinal studies. The students' feedback from this study will form the basis for improvement in the next iteration.

    A Primer for Design and Systems Thinkers: A First-Year Engineering Course for Mindset Development · 2024 · DOI

  • Future pedagogies must foreground ethical awareness, collaborative authorship, and ecological responsibility. Architectural education should cultivate designers who think systemically, empathically, and critically.

    Human-AI Collaboration in Architectural Design: A Comparative Analysis of Conceptual and Computational Form Generation · 2026 · DOI

  • Further research on the effectiveness of ICH design courses, - Exploration of the application of digital technology in ICH…

    Intangible Cultural Heritage Course Design in the Digital Age and Its Effects of Interdisciplinary Workshop · 2024 · DOI

  • The ICH design course faces several challenges and many problems, - There is a need for a new approach to ICH design courses, - The conventional single-disciplinary approach may not be effective in stimulating students'…

    Intangible Cultural Heritage Course Design in the Digital Age and Its Effects of Interdisciplinary Workshop · 2024 · DOI

  • Further learning experiences are needed - Research reliability, transferability, and validity need to be…

    Experiential Learning for Circular Operations Management in Higher Education · 2024 · DOI

  • Taxonomies and tests of human skills Skills assessments in education Abilities and skills: Assessing humans and artificial intelligence/robotics systems An occupational taxonomic approach to assessing AI capabilities Artificial intelligence capabilities and their measures Identifying artificial intelligence capabilities: What and how to test Assessing artificial intelligence capabilities Assessing Natural Language…

    Investigating generative artificial intelligence’s role in logo design pedagogy: effects on learning experience and outcomes · 2026 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Design Education and Practice

Most recent work

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Open questions raised by papers listed on this page include: (1) Future research should investigate the implications of artificial intelligence for design practice and education (“Creativity and artificial intelligence in design”, 2026); (2) The lack of understanding of the role of ECD education by some parents and guardians (“Early Childhood Education as an Instrument for Design Thinking: Cases and…”, 2026); (3) Future work should examine these dynamics across varying levels of AI familiarity and prior orientation, and could explore how targeted resources might deepen designers’ comprehension of AI’s capabilities and constraints (“How Designers Envision Value-Oriented AI Concepts with Generative AI”, 2026); (4) There is a need to understand how AI interacts with conceptual design thinking (“Human-AI Collaboration in Architectural Design: A Comparative Analysis of…”, 2026); (5) This effect can hinder creativity and has not yet been explored in relation to GenAI, even though it is of major importance for understanding creative issues (“Switching Perspectives: Enhancing Generative Artificial Intelligence's…”, 2025). 251 gap statements have been mined from Design Education and Practice papers in our 7.9M-paper local library, which holds 3,019 papers on the topic; the gaps come from whichever of those papers state one. They are mostly the research gaps the authors state and the papers' abstracts, plus future-work, limitations and challenges passages. The ones listed below are a selection still marked open; each names the study that raised it, with a DOI link where the paper has one, so you can read the original claim in context.

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