Creating change & impacting the world

Students disassembling products.

Understanding Product Engineering

by Bas Flipsen

When you look at an object, what do you see? The exterior is what meets the eye, but this course aims to explore what’s behind, underneath or inside. To take a physical object and do a product autopsy, with the goal of developing an understanding and appreciation for how products are made.

Think of your smartphone. It may have a sleek exterior, but there’s so much more to it than you see at a glance. Through the process of disassembling products, we learn what’s under the surface.

This course aims to inspire an appreciation for physical objects, the notion of looking at them from a different perspective. It’s about understanding products and product architectures. How are products physically made and how are parts connected with each other? What is the function of each part and how do they add up to the main function? Thinking about a part and why it’s engineered that way. How are things made and what would happen when you use a different material? Does it still function as it should?

Get a basic understanding of every day products and how they are materialized. Learn to analyse a product and all of its interconnections. Explore the importance of sustainability and not disposing of products so easily.

Ultimately, gain an appreciation for physical design which is useful for Design Project 1 as well as other future design projects.

“I hope this course gets students to see products from a different perspective, to think about them differently than before. When they walk through a shop to look at a product not just as something to buy but to reason how it’s made, used, manufactured, why it exists. I really want to get students enthusiastic about physical objects.”

Collage by Ianus Keller

Understanding Design

by Bregje van Eekelen & Ianus Keller

Design is all around us, not just in objects, but in everything that we see or do. It’s ambitious to try and understand what it really is. This course offers an introductory encounter with the field of design. It’s a sense-making exploration to provide a framework and a critical thinking toolkit, preparing students for their studies and beyond. Welcome to Design 101.

As one of the first encounters with the field of industrial design engineering, this course introduces the conventions, language and constructs that are the basis for the academic journey that lies ahead.

Through immersive experiences, learn about key concepts in the field of design. Explore the history and changes of design, how production and consumption have shifted over the years. Consider how that influences the way we design and who we design for. Prepare yourself for an uncertain future.

Develop critical thinking skills and a contextualising mindset to understand and deal with challenges. Build a design vocabulary and learn to be mindful of the perspectives of others. Participate in debates on topics like capitalism and politics and the role they play in design. Discover how design, society and culture influence each other.

With a lens of curiosity, learn how to feel and sense the expanse of the designed world. And maybe even become slightly obsessed with the field of design.

“We want our students to be curious and to become even more curious. We want them to have a questioning mindset. We are not telling them this is how it is, but we want to equip them with the tools to encounter design methods and problems, to be able to unpack a toolkit and get to work.”

Photo: ‘Lone tree’, Troy Williams, 2018. Released via Unsplash. Illustration: Astrid Rutten, 2021.

Photo: ‘Mist over a field 3’, Mirjam Aarbodem-van der Geur, 2021. Released under CC BY-NC-SA via We Like Sharing, Flickr. Illustration: Astrid Rutten, 2021.

Understanding Organisations

by Sander Mulder

Organisations are somewhat like trees, with roots, trunks and branches that extend in different directions. Only if designers understand the roots of organisations can they make a difference and give rise to novel branches. Increasingly, designers shape organisations creatively and responsibly by devising new key collective goals that address the challenges of our time.

Everyone has a lived experienced being part of an organisation, be it with a school, hospital or company. Tapping into that experience, this course aims to bring a deeper understanding of organisations, to look at them from three perspectives: technical, interpretative and critical.

Explore how to categorise, interpret and produce knowledge about organisations while making use of key thinkers and renowned examples that shaped the study of organisations. Such efforts to create general understanding helps with developing a critical view of organisations, with an eye to what they could become while considering the consequences for stakeholders and society.

Learn to think beyond the status quo, recognising that we cannot solve today’s problems with the thinking of today. Use this to propose a specific change within an organisation. Part of a designer’s job is to make sense.

This course can be applied to Design Projects 1, 2 and 4 and relates to other courses that require an understanding of organisations.

“Students should experience that they can plant new trees or branches. By clarifying their own aspirations and understanding the dynamics of organisations they can deliberately conceive triggers that set people into motion.”

Understanding Humans

by Valentijn Visch

Design for humans, with humans, and from a human perspective. In order to design well for people, it is essential to understand them. This course is an exploration through personal experience of building an understanding of human theory. By getting to know yourself you can better understand others and apply this in design practice.

Working with and for people is an important part of design. This course lays a foundation for understanding humans by providing a toolbox of theoretical concepts and looking at how they can be linked to humans.

Explore three different perspectives on how to approach humans as a designer. First, consider Human Factors including physical, perceptual and cognitive ergonomics. Then dive into the Human Experience with topics including emotions, aesthetics & meaning, and motivation & behaviour. Finally, look at the Human Context through cultural & social, political & economic contexts as well as the context of daily life.

Discover the importance of design research. Participate in discussions that build understanding of the concepts and develop critical thinking skills. Learn to ask the right questions, how to build an argument and defend your position. Reflect on your own human experiences to explore the personal relevance of the theoretical concepts.

This course is directly linked with Design Project 1 and is also relevant to further design studies.

“I really want students to understand the relevance of theory for a designer. We are academic designers and design researchers and I think the motivation and the inspiration that you can gain from theory is important to learn. In our course we will try to make this explicit, how theory can be inspirational for designers.”

Semester 2

Product-services

After the first products are designed in Semester 1, it’s time to take the next step. This includes exploring the digital side of design in Semester 2.

By quickly going through design iterations, concept product-services are created. The knowledge you gain in Semester 1 is expanded upon in the courses taught in Semester 2. The interaction between people and digital technology plays a central role in all of this.

You learn how to conduct research for design projects and how to create value with a product-service for a user and an organisation. By the end of the year, you will have taken your first steps towards embracing complexity.