Course description
In this three-week course students develop basic knowledge and skills of the industrial design process. Students are tasked with developing a consumer product that addresses problems and needs of an identified target group. The students develop skills in concept generation, visual communication, 3-D plastic modelling, and the synthesis of form, colour, materials, and functionality.
Learning goals
Describe and apply basic industrial design methodology
Identify design related problems and needs in target groups
Formulate design specifications accompanied by mood boards
Select and apply relevant visual communication tools in the different phases of the industrial design process
Design a consumer product
Build a full scale plastic 3D model of a selected concept
Work independently on an individual design assignment
Argue for a selected design solution through text and illustrations
Teaching
As part of this course, students are asked to develop different concepts for their identified challenge, including concepts for details of the proposed solution. A full day is set aside for guided exercises, where students are introduced to iterative concept development. Here students follow a progression framework that supports structuring their work, making decisions, and iterating on their general concepts as well as features and details. For this, students use both manual and AI assisted tools. The students are divided into groups and use manual tools (drawing with pen and paper, or on a tablet) for half a day, and AI tools during the other half of the day. After the guided exercises, the students are free to select the tools they consdier best suited for the task they are working on.
Exam form
Type of assessment: The students work on an individual design project. They hand in a portfolio at the end of the three-week course that documents all their activities. The portfolio is the basis for assessing the students’ performance and is evaluated by an external examiner using the 7 step scale.
Summary and impact of using AI in this 41031 Industrial Design
Starting in January 2023, students were prompted to use AI tools in parallel with manual sketching techniques to create concepts. Even in January 2023 the AI generated concepts were stunning and of much higher visually quality than most of the ones drawn by hand. The AI generated concepts were also often more diverse and appeared more creative. However, the AI generated concepts were often unrealistic, incomplete, and at least in part, made no sense since they did not support detailed iteration of an idea or concept. While students in January 2023 used AI tools primarily to generate concepts, they recently used AI tools to help with the creation of moodboards, background settings, more trageted iteration, and enhancing the visual quality of their maunually created sketches.