Products Now Studio

This is an IPD design studio: "Developing designs that work!"

In the Products Now design studio (PNds) you will develop a design solution in the form of a product that fits a wider context. Join us for an ambitious design engineering challenge. You will dive into a highly complex client-based project using research, design, engineering, and team collaboration methods. Within a team of design-engineering students, you will design a product and service system. The team will start with an existing concept or prototype, and make a (re-)design which is circular and entails, besides a tangible prototype including a digital component.

The process involves teams working on a highly-complex project, engaging an iterative design approach (ideate, build, test, evaluate), and solving intricate problems. Individually you will deep-dive in one of the identified challenges and come to evidence based-solutions through analysis and research.

Together with your team you will further develop multiple prototypes combining the different challenges into a final demo model, which is presented to the client. This hands-on experience allows you to deepen and demonstrate your understanding of design and engineering throughout the design process.

The course consists of the following phases:

1. Introduction: Students form teams and analyse the design brief.

2. Explore design opportunities: You will challenge your design brief through the following lenses: circularity, ergonomics, culture and context, service design, and engineering design. By making prototypes you will explore the design solution space and come to new concepts and designs, and their concerning challenges.

3. Deep dive: In this phase you will individually analyse one of the identified main challenges through research using different methods. The outcomes will result in possibilities, requirements, constraints, and potential rebounds.

4. Design & Engineering: The different insights will be combined into a viable concept for embodiment. The teams subsequently further develop their product-service systems by means of iterative product engineering, and validate their findings by means of a high-fidelity demonstrator.