Industrial design education in the age of digital products

Abstract

Preparing product design students for the design of digital products provides a challenge for product design educators. This paper reports an experiment in a senior-year product design studio course. Students were assigned three projects with three different strategies based on the management and the structure of the design process. The analysis of observations on students’ design processes, semi-structured interviews with students, and the analysis of design solutions revealed that students mentally separate a product’s physical form and digital interface. Students reported time management as their biggest challenge for the design of digital products. Even though they experienced problems in their design process, they think interface design skills as a part of their professional requirements. These findings indicate a need to better address the design of digital products in product design curriculum in general and studio education in particular.