Mohammad
Whilst your question falls outside the scope of the forum (“PhD-Design was created to discuss, and exchange information about PhDs in design”), I feel duty bound to stop lurking and respond to what is undoubtedly a genuine request for advice. This advice necessitates a degree of reflection in which you should identify the capacity of your industrial design programme/students to produce beautiful, ingenious and technically viable products; i.e. on an international level, are they excellent, good, average or something else? Programmes that you might use as a point of reference for excellence include Art Center College of Design (USA), Umea University (Sweden) and, hopefully, at least one in the UK.
I would not want you to respond to the reflection on this forum and I cannot form an opinion on your programme as examples of work are not available on the web site. However, if after your reflection you regard your students as being anything other than excellent or excellent/good, I would advise you to identify the short-comings and resolve these before even considering specialist electives. After all, the generic nature of industrial design, particularly at consultancy level, means that specialism is not required. In fact, it is more often the case that seeing problems with a fresh pair of designerly eyes is a key driver in the identification of innovative solutions.
Should you decide that your students are already operating to a high international standard, I would still not recommend an elective in toy design as the industrial design curriculum is at capacity and, if you try to add more, there is a real risk of core capability suffering. Instead, I would advise you to use the major project that is typically undertaken in a student’s final year to pursue areas of interest and respond to commercial demand. Specialist expertise (e.g. child psychology/global toy trends) could then be utilised to support projects as required. That particular approach is taken by final year students here at Loughborough where 8 months is spent working on substantial product design solutions in a diverse range of sectors that include medical, sports, education, leisure, disability, consumer, military and, of course, toys.
Best wishes in the development of your programme.
Mark
Dr Mark Evans
Loughborough Design School
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From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Mohammad Razzaghi [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 03 November 2012 07:21
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Child-Oriented Design
Dear All,
Due to a growing interest amongst our students (and partly from the
industry) for developing socially-specific toys and child-oriented products,
we are thinking to develop an elective course for our undergraduate
students, outlining Child-Oriented Design (COD).
Critical comments, suggestions, papers, course outlines, experiences, very
welcome.
Regards,
Mohammad
__________________________
D r M o h a m m a d R a z z a g h i
Program Director | Industrial Design
Department of Industrial Design
Faculty of Applied Arts | University of Art
Vali-e-Asr Ave., Tehran 1591634311 - IRAN
<mailto:[log in to unmask]> [log in to unmask]
+98(21) 6646-3193
P
Please always consider the environment
"To design is to devise courses of action aimed at changing existing
situations into preferred ones" (Simon, 1982(
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