Industrial design execution & academic reflection in a three-week-package

One of the structural challenges of educating industrial designers in a university setting is bridging the gap between the rigor of science in academia and the execution-oriented practice. In general exemplary dives and conceptual proposals are completely acceptable within a project in the university. So how can the reality of product development and execution emphasis be introduced in an academic setting with low risk, while maintaining the academic requirement for knowledge creation and reflection? To accommodate the academic framework, the academic assignment was a short paper with reflections on methods and approached comparing the ‘new’ process to design and entrepreneurship methods, theories and practice. Then a simple but hard challenge was given: At the end of week three a “Designers Market” was to be arranged at campus. Each student (or pair of students) should design and manufacture 20 units of a product to be promoted and sold at the market.
The experiment turned out to yield more benefits and effect than anticipated. The observed challenges faced by students during the approximately 10 working days were a small-scale version of the real challenges of defining, designing, manufacturing and marketing a product. The combination of informal and formal evaluation using theoretical reflection on practice-oriented execution seems to be useful model for introducing the full version of product development with very low risk and still adhering to knowledge creation of academia.