The Significance of the Collaborative Design Process in the Institutional Context

Abstract

Industrial design typically interacts with variousdisciplines such as engineering, business, sociology, and psychology, as well as diverse organizations ranging from local companies to government agencies. In educational environments, such collaboration can serve as an excellent pedagogical tool and a model for maintaining the relevance (and future viability) of industrial design programs in large research universities. Depending on the nature of the collaborative project and team members, however, the design solution turns out differently. For a new product development, it is significant to understand the importance of collaboration and how it can affect the final solution. In order to explore them, special attention will be devoted to case studies describing collaborative design and showing the different design considerations in which the author was involved to develop productsin the university environment. The primary purpose of this study is to demonstrate the significance of design collaboration and to discover how the design concentration can be decided in collaborative design in educational environment. The case studies are part of an ongoing relationship between bioengineering, industrial design, and mechanical engineering on a major university campus along with a local company, and will demonstratehow expertise in a wide range of disciplines is necessary when developing products. While focused on a specific project, this case study has broader implications for anyone interested in leveraging collaboration to spark new forms of education and faculty research in industrial design.