Attending to care in responsible and innovative design: Devices for teaching care ethics in Engineering Ethics Education

Traditional engineering education has often prioritised technical problem-solving over relational, ethical, and holistic concerns. Recent work, including The Routledge International Handbook of Engineering Ethics Education, and seminal studies integrating qualitative data in experience-centered design highlight the need for more intentional integration of relational ethics and emotional awareness into engineering curricula.

In response, this workshop introduces the Design Thinking with Care framework, developed by the facilitator. Design thinking is increasingly used in engineering education and widely adopted in innovation practices. The framework maps Joan Tronto’s phases of care - Attentiveness (caring about), Responsibility (taking care of), Competence (care giving), Responsiveness (care receiving), and Solidarity (caring with), onto the traditional stages of design thinking: Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. The aim is to embed care-centered values more explicitly into design thinking stages.

This session focuses on the first stage of design: combining the Empathise stage of design thinking with Tronto’s Caring About (attentiveness). Drawing on Jutta Treviranus’ Inclusive Design principles, participants will complete an Inclusive Design Mapping exercise followed by a structured reflection on care, inclusion, and relational design priorities.

Through structured and interactive reflection, the workshop invites participants to notice lived experience, marginalisation, and exclusion, offering a starting point for cultivating methodically a relational and ethically aware approach to both design and pedagogy. It aims to spark small shifts in engineering education practices that can lead to broader ripple effects in the wider community, fostering care-based, inclusive thinking in engineering education and beyond. Participants will learn teaching devices to develop a transversal competence in engineering and ethics.