Product & Industrial Design

Bridging the gap between industry and the lecture hall: Small-scale manufacturing machines for experiential learning within the teaching environment

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Product & Industrial Design

Students in Design Education are equipped to enter their respective creative industries. It is the intention that their skills and capabilities, once they graduate, are matched as closely as possible to the industries into which they will fit. During their time within the higher education faculty, they need to be exposed to relevant technologies and processes. By adapting manufacturing technologies for small-scale use in the classroom, students can gain hands-on experience and integrate these technologies into their learning processes.

Physical meets digital: Advancing industrial design higher education through the incorporation of projection-mapping in undergraduate teaching and learning

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Product & Industrial Design

As emerging digital technologies become increasingly integrated into our everyday lives, it is important to evaluate how they can be used both as beneficial tools in the design process and how they can be effectively integrated into higher education pedagogy to enhance teaching and learning processes. As we enter the fast-changing Industry 4.0, students must be suitably and sufficiently equipped with a wide range of skills that Industry 4.0 requires. This includes the “hard skills” of practically using emerging digital technologies, as well as the “soft skills” required to effectively apply these technologies in sustainable and ethical ways.

Speculative futures: Questioning nanotechnology and sustainable development through industrial design pedagogy

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Design Education Strategy
Product & Industrial Design

The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is rapidly blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological worlds through advances in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and other technologies. While Industry 4.0 is transforming our future realities, it is essential not to lose sight of human needs and basic human rights. Development must balance social, economic, and environmental sustainability, which is why designers need to engage with ethical considerations and social realities. One example of a technology that has both potential benefits and ethical threats is nanotechnology. Nanobots, machine versions of bacteria or viruses, can perform pre-programmed tasks autonomously at the atomic level.

‘The Pretty Stuff’: Gender bias and the future of design knowledge in the South African industrial design context

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Product & Industrial Design

In the era of the fourth industrial revolution that proposes an increasingly automated future, designers need not lose focus on the discipline’s important role in social design and innovation. Such an undertaking becomes difficult when the discipline of design itself has inbuilt biases and inequalities. Gender bias is one such prejudice that design educators and researchers need to become more aware of and engage with, not only to prepare our students for the workplace but also to begin to change the patriarchal dominance of the design industry and hence the equity of the discipline itself.

The ethics of tastemaking: towards responsible conspicuous consumption

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Product & Industrial Design

The systemic nature of cultural production implies that designed objects are made desirable (or acceptable) by tastemakers who endow objects with forms of social distinction. Social distinction highlights or diffuses status and reveals self-perceptions of consumers’ identities. In this way, design becomes a form of tastemaking, invested in the construction of identity and is therefore a form of cultural production rooted in consumption. The role of the designer in facilitating conspicuous consumption is therefore critical in the context of social distinction, cohesion and identity.

Ethics in design and issues of social class: reflecting on the learning unit: Design and the Construction of Class Distinction

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Product & Industrial Design

The second year Design Studies learning unit “Design and the Construction of Class Distinction” (BA Communication Design, Industrial Design, University of Johannesburg) introduces students to definitions of social class in terms of capitalism (Olin-Wright 2008, Goldthorpe 1980, Crompton 1998, 2003) as well as to Bourdieusian concepts of habitus, field and capital (Bourdieu 1989; Weininger 2005, Bennett, et al 2010; Jenkins 2003; Grenfell 2003).

The role of the industrial design educator in equipping design students to be ethical decision makers

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Product & Industrial Design

The role of the design educator is to mediate learning and equip students to effectively contribute to their specific field once they graduate. With an ever-increasing demand for the ethical consideration of the sustainability of products and the impact of the manufacture thereof, so too the role of the educator should compensate and prepare learners accordingly. This paper aims to investigate the social and environmental responsibilities of industrial design professionals by referring to the works of key authors as well as current industry practices.

Mapping Empathy and Ethics in the Design Process

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Product & Industrial Design

There is no doubt that the role of product designers has changed considerably, not least with the rise of human-centred design. While Papanek’s 1971 “Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change” seemed radical at the time, his ideas seem entirely at home in the 21st century, including his call to adopt more social responsibility in design. These views are echoed in the contemporary  findings  of  professionals  and  researchers  associated  with  ICSID,  the  International Council of Societies of Industrial Design. The focus has shifted, from the designer as the expert to the user, or community, as the expert in their own environment; and Co-design, Participatory design, and Universal Design are but a few examples of such people-focussed design approaches.

Additive manufacturing in 3D product design and development practice: an interdisciplinary shift

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Product & Industrial Design

This paper reflects on aspects that impact on an interdisciplinary shift motivated by technology‐transfer within a University of Technology (UoT). Discussion focuses on the integrated use of Additive Manufacturing (AM) as automated layer by layer 3D printing product design and development technology within a 3D Art and Design studio-practice environment. As emerging technology, AM’s impact has redefined the procedural framework and required knowledge coherence for the development of 3D objects.

Time, quality and strategic adequacy dimensions of product design processes

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Product & Industrial Design

Full Title: The enhancement of the time, quality and strategic adequacy dimensions of product design processes: a doctoral study in its first stage

In Portugal the Product Design Processes display several inefficiencies that result on the bad performance of the products in general. Therefore I have initiated an investigation about design processes that hopefully will conduct to the development of a design methodology that will match design education practices with industrial ones.

Teaching production technology – doing more with less

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Product & Industrial Design

How does my design work?” and “How can it be produced?” are the two key technological questions that the industrial design engineer must be able to answer. Looking at the second question, we see that there is still a lot to be gained: 60% of all new products do not enter production as scheduled, with 25% of these products requiring major redesign. In part, this problem can be traced back to industrial design education.

Strategies for Infusing Cultural Elements in Product Design

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Product & Industrial Design

There is little in-depth research that can assist designers to use culture as a catalyst for designing innovative products within Botswana’s context. This is supported by evidence from the literature which indicate that from an African perspective, there is no solid theoretical framework which can assist designers to consciously integrate users culture in designing products. This challenges designers to gain a deeper understanding of users culture and find strategies on how they can use culture as a resource in product development. 

Nine Factors Guiding the Theory in Design Education and the Practice of Teaching in Industrial Design

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Product & Industrial Design

This paper presents a review of different authors’ approaches about a framework to guide design education and practice. Such framework was named as “factors”, “points”, “conditions”, “requirements”, words that have been used as a significant part of the discourse of modern design thinkers and educators. Basically those factors are identified with the notions of form, function, and information, man, utility, economy, aesthetic, ergonomics, industry, and others. Our particular approach to that issue is that clear design factors are important to the definition of industrial design disciplines.

Making, co-creating and testing games: Learning about nutrition through play – Fitwits

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Product & Industrial Design

There is substantial educational research on the benefits of play, designed learning opportunities and experiences that incorporate play, and ways that collaboration through play creates opportunities for teachable moments in children's lives (Resnick 2004).  Our research is based on this foundation, using participatory design methods coupled with hands-on learning to create games and activities that teach kids and their families the fundamentals of good nutrition and dietary choices. 

Innovation is hope

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Product & Industrial Design

A program of non-prescriptive design in a culture of innovation

In our understanding the Innovation is a space defined by the conceptual innovation and her implementation tools: technical innovation and formal expression. They are together the coordinates of this SPACE of INTEGRAL INNOVATION.

In this perception the dynamic axle, which is major in developing the space, the “z” coordinate is the conceptual innovation. This ability of creating genuine ideas is the most important asset of humanity and the reason of our overwhelming adaptability to change. From this point of view, educating the integral innovation is of high relevance.

Developing products & services for the Base of the Pyramid (BoP)

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Product & Industrial Design

Recent work is re-conceptualizing global poverty as an attractive growth opportunity for firms that can simultaneously alleviate the problem of poverty. The so-called ‘Base of the economic Pyramid (BoP)’, exists of 4 billion people that live on an income of less than $3 a day. Tapping into these overlooked markets will require companies and designers to reconfigure their business and product innovation models.

Designing Breakthrough Bamboo Products from Africa

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Product & Industrial Design

Southern African countries are blessed with abundance of rich non-wood species including bamboo.

Countries like Botswana, Zambia, Kenya and Tanzania have most resource-rich ecosystems in the continent. Previous studies have shown that, in these countries, non-wood products are among the diversity of resources that have contributed to the well being of local communities, particularly at household level where resources are used for subsistence and income generation.

Continuing professional development for product designers: barriers and opportunities

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Design Education Strategy
Product & Industrial Design

More designers expect and are willing to spend time to continue their education. It is not only because of new job requirements that designers need to upgrade and update their knowledge and experience, but also for self-satisfaction. To meet this educational need, a part-time programme has been offered to product designers with different educational backgrounds and working experiences.

Evaluations of the overall arrangement of the programme and of the teaching and learning of some subjects have been conducted for six years. The evaluations have included questionnaires, classroom observations, and in-depth interviews with students and teachers. This paper briefly reviews the social changes and the need of product designers for continuing education.

A Network for Sustainable Innovation in Africa

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Product & Industrial Design

A major challenge for industry in Africa is to innovate: initiate, or adapt fast enough to changes in the economic and commercial business environment. Doing this in a sustainable way means catering to human needs while maintaining the environmental and natural resources and local communities as a long term pre-condition for human societies.

The relevance of successful and flexible innovative capabilities among industry, knowledge institutes, non-governmental organisations and governments is directly related to this challenge. Key topics are product innovation, process innovation and organizational innovation.

A Design Studio to the Faculty of Design - Polytechnic of Milan

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Product & Industrial Design

In order to understand the origin and the development of the Italian designer's training, it is crucial to show the industrial and cultural context of this country, which made the 'Made in Italy' successful.

Products nature is certainly what has mainly contributed to such success, but product is only the output of an original industrial structure, as Italy was different from other countries with the same economic development: it has taken up a production system going by routes different from the big industry - economies of scale, standardization, serialization.

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DEFSA conferences

DEFSA promotes relevant research with the focus on design + education through its biennial conferences, to promote professionalism, accountability and ethics in the education of young designers. Our next conference is a hybrid event. See above for details.

Critical skills endorsement

Professional Members in good standing can receive a certificate of membership, but DEFSA cannot provide confirmation or endorsement of skills whatsoever. DEFSA only confirm membership of DEFSA which is a NPO for Design Education in South Africa (https://www.defsa.org.za/imagine).