When Moving Backward Means Moving Forward – Educating Systems Engineers in Designerly Ways of Thinking

Systems Engineering as a discipline provides many tools for managing complexity and reducing risks. However, these tools come with drawbacks when ideating new product concepts in early lifecycle phases when the problem and solutions spaces are open. This paper suggests that methods from the Design field have a complementing role early in the systems lifecycle, but that those methods need to be accompanied by a different way of approaching problems, something that takes time to learn. We present experiences from a hybrid university course, where regular students were mixed with professional systems engineers for more rapid development of Design method experience in both groups.