The Industrial Design (ID) program teaches students to design products in support of human activities and interactions. We emphasize human observation, modeling, and testing, while preserving the richness of the visual and formal traditions in the field. Our interpretation of “product” is broad: it includes services and systems as well as tangible artifacts.

• Gallery of ID student work
  

Our Industrial Design alumni work in a broad range of consulting firms, corporate design groups, and individual consultancies. While a majority remains closely connected to the design profession, others have taken design thinking into the fields of broadcasting, public policy, and environmental advocacy.

A sampling of their services would include:

• consumer and recreational product design
• medical equipment design
• transportation design
• information/technology design
• industrial/manufacturing equipment design
• materials/color consulting
• design research and design education
• human factors
  

There is a very high probability that today you will touch, sit on, drive, interact with, play with, wear, or otherwise engage with products designed by the School of Design’s ID alumni.

Artifacts, Form, and Systems
Students in Industrial Design follow a sequence of courses aimed at helping them better understand the complexities of our technological environment and the people who live, act, work, and play in it. The curriculum begins with a focus on singular artifacts, but then expands to include designs integrated within complex and purposeful systems.

The core ID studio sequence begins with a focus on one-off, hand-generated form, and the issues that surround its development and making—technical, visual, and tactile. The curriculum focus then shifts to the intention, impact, and meaning of form in personal, social, and cultural contexts. The advanced studios of the ID program raise the technical, social, and business-related concerns that designers must address in a mass-production context. The goal is to equip students with methods to hear, acknowledge, and balance the voices of users, manufacturers, and societies, who are all stakeholders of varying degree.

This major sequence of four studio courses in the second and third year of the program takes place concurrently with a series of supporting technical and contextual classes. Students are required to augment their studies with courses in human and social factors, mechanics and electronics, prototyping methods, photography, and digital prototyping. Students may also elect to take courses in rapid prototyping, visualization, furniture design, environmental design, and advanced human factors.