Motivated by the growing number of hybrid products with extensive software and service components, this paper reviews four representative agile methods from the domain of software for their applicability to both the industrial design education and practice. The review is based on a comparative analysis of the methods through four scopes, including their application spectrum, level of guidance, process coverage and project management capabilities. Based on the analysis, it is argued that agile methods are able to offer design students the tools for bridging the gap between the software development teams and their own domain of physical product development.