A novel design education approach for professional global product realization

Fain, Nusa and Moes, Niels and van Doorn, Ellemieke and Duhovnik, Joze (2008) A novel design education approach for professional global product realization. In: International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education 2008, 2008-09-04 - 2008-09-05.

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Abstract

Emerging trends in design practice, such as collaborative design and multi-national, multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary (multi-x) teamwork, call for ongoing changes in design education. Educational institutions need to be proactive in adapting to such trends, in order to ensure an adequate development of the design competences of their students. The graduated design students must be able to effectively solve real-life new product development (NPD) problems in multi-x environments. In this paper we present a novel approach towards design education, where special focus is put on multi-x collaboration of design students in solving NPD tasks. We present the idea of an Academic Virtual Enterprise (AVE), a project oriented educational agreement, which is based on volatile alliance of industrial and academic partners for mutual advantages. A course, called Global Product Realization (GPR) is presented as an example of how to implement AVE into design education and provide a stimulating learning environment for students in several disciplines (i.e. mechanical engineering, programming, electronics, design, etc.), where they can get experience in multi-x collaboration in NPD and develop several aspects of design competences needed for their future professional practice.

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