Changing the Perceptions of Making: Adjusting the Mechanics of Ideation for Multidisciplinary Success

Abstract

<p>Traditional Industrial Design education idealizes a specific style that signifies “The Industrial Designer.” This involves a fairly finished outcome through process work and makes the designer focus on the sketch rather than concept itself, which is problematic for developing ideas. What should be rapid creation and expression of concept becomes a more laborious process. The importance of moving swiftly through ideas to refine faster and more effectively becomes tarnished. In assessing instruction practices in sponsored studios (when a corporation partners with a student design studio), we premised that students could work in the same fashion as an in-house design studio, with diminutive ideation but increasing standard for success. Because students would be concentrating on editing down a mass amount of variables with swift precision, time would not be wasted on improving the craft of an initial, potentially ill-developed concept, leading to more projects going into production. This fall, students from Industrial Design, Apparel Merchandising and Design, and Kinesiology, partnered with United Sports Brand (USB) for a sponsored studio instructed in the framework premised above. The outcomes were a monumental success with 23 of the projects are moving forward at USB to the next phase of design and development, where only 3 moved forward to next phase of design and development previously. We want to look at what specific instruction techniques, making techniques, and resulting studio culture lead to this success</p>