Embedding Cybersecurity Into Design Education: Increasing Designers’ Awareness of Cybersecurity Throughout the Design Process

Abstract As more digital devices with sensing capabilities are introduced into users’ daily lives, the risks of threats to data and privacy and security have increased. While cybersecurity has been acknowledged as an important concern in developing products with digital services, currently available design methodologies and practices offer limited effective guidance to designers to explicitly address cybersecurity issues. In this paper, we present a case study from a product design course at the University of California, Berkeley, where the course’s teaching team implemented an intervention in the form of cybersecurity-focused educational materials into the design process. The baseline and post-intervention survey results indicate that the cybersecurity intervention throughout the course had positively influenced the students’ awareness of cybersecurity (p < 0.001, SD = 0.79, 26% increase in score, Cohen’s d = 0.81). The intervention provoked the designers to consider and include aspects of cybersecurity in developing their design solutions throughout most of the design process. However, their increased awareness aside, the extent of the student teams considering cybersecurity had tapered off over the 6-week design course with little noticeable influence in the final design.