Ada Hurst

Ada Hurst is a Continuing Lecturer and Associate Chair Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at the University of Waterloo. She has taught and coordinated the capstone design project course for the Management Engineering program since 2011. She also teaches courses in organizational behavior, theory, and technology.

Based on her training as a researcher in human and organizational behaviour and her practical experience as an engineering design educator, she has built a research program in the discipline of design. Her research lies in the areas of (engineering) design cognition, design management, and design learning/education. She is also interested in impact of AI on design cognition, management, and education, both as a tool to assist with design practice, and to facilitate conducting research on design. Ultimately, she's interested in how people design, how they learn to design, and how we can make the teaching and management of design better. Her research is funded by SSHRC and Learning Innovation and Teaching Enhancement (LITE) grants.

Ada is the co-founder of the Canadian Design Workshop (https://uwaterloo.ca/canadian-design-workshop/), a biennial conference series to promote design and design education research in Canada.

• engineering design
• design cognition
• design management and innovation management
• large language models for design research
• design education, including design learning in extracurricular settings (hackathons, work-integrated learning, student design teams)

• 2015, Doctorate, Management Sciences, University of Waterloo, Canada
• 2010, Master of Applied Science, Management Sciences, University of Waterloo, Canada
• 2007, Bachelor of Applied Science, Electrical Engineering, University of Waterloo, Canada

• 2023 Distinguished Performance Award, Faculty of Engineering, University of Waterloo
• 2023 "Reviewers' Favourite" award in 24rd International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED'23)
• 2021 “Best Research Paper” award in Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education, Decision Sciences Institute
• 2021 "Reviewers' Favourite" award in 23rd International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED'21)
• 2016 Outstanding Performance Award, Faculty of Engineering, University of Waterloo

• 2023 - present: Associate Chair Undergraduate Studies, Department of Management Science and Engineering
• 2023 - present: Associate Editor, Studies in Engineering Education
• 2020 - present: Co-founder and Co-chair, Canadian Design Workshop series of conferences
• 2020 - present: Vice-Chair, Governance (previously Vice-Chair, Operations), Sandford Fleming Foundation

• Professional Licencee Engineering (P.L.Eng), British Columbia
• Member, Design Society

• MSCI 200A - Seminar
  • Taught in 2023
• MSCI 200B - Seminar
  • Taught in 2024
• MSCI 311 - Organizational Design and Technology
  • Taught in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023
• MSCI 401 - Management Engineering Design Project 1
  • Taught in 2019, 2021
• MSCI 597 - Complementary Studies Topics in Management Sciences
  • Taught in 2019, 2023

* Only courses taught in the past 5 years are displayed.

• Rennick, C., Litster, G., Hulls, C., & Hurst, A. (2023) Curricular hackathons for engineering design learning: The case of Engineering Design Days, IEEE Transactions on Education, https://doi.org/10.1109/TE.2023.3295754
• Litster, G., Hurst, A. and Cardoso, C. (2023) A systems thinking inspired approach to understanding design activity, In: Gero, J.S. (eds) Design Computing and Cognition’22. DCC 2022. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20418-0_11
• Nickel, J., Duimering, P. R. and Hurst, A., (2022) Manipulating the design space to resolve trade-offs: Theory and evidence, Design Studies, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2022.101095
• Nespoli, O.G., Hurst, A. and Gero J.S., (2021) Exploring tutor-student interactions in a novel virtual design studio, Design Studies, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2021.101019
• Flus, M. & Hurst, A., (2021) Design at hackathons: New opportunities for design research, Design Science, https://doi.org/10.1017/dsj.2021.1
• Litster, G. and Hurst, A., (2021) Protocol analysis in engineering design education research: Observations, limitations, and opportunities, Studies in Engineering Education, http://doi.org/10.21061/see.27

• Navigating the complex landscape of sustainable engineering design: Skills and mindsets over methods and tools
• STEM to the Sky: Meet Dr. Ada Hurst, Management Engineer