Designing courses in industrial design with particular reference to the role of undergraduate projects

© 1993 Dr. Elivio BonolloIn this thesis the design of courses in Industrial design has been investigated with particular reference to the role of undergraduate design projects and with due regard to the attitudes, knowledge and skills expected of industrial designers. This investigation has been set in the context of a final-year, degree programme in industrial design which had a substantial project content to prepare the new graduates for employment as professional designers. From a critical review of the relevant literature, the characteristics of the industrial design discipline have been identified and a novel theoretical framework established for investigating the design of tertiary courses in industrial design, having in mind related engineering design methodology. An investigation into the role of industry-based, design projects in the educational process of transforming student designers into competent professionals has been carried out, and criteria and guidelines for the successful conduct and evaluation of such projects have been set up

Computing and Green

In this article, the authors discuss the predicament of student designers, where many struggle to develop expertise in the design process. Because of the repudiation of methodological techniques by many professional designers, the teaching of formal design methodologies has not achieved wide acceptance by educationalists in industrial design. As a consequence, practitioners who were not taught design methods largely fail to incorporate them into their professional design work. The purpose of this article is to review the situation with design methods, to explain the predicament of students as they struggle with the process of designing, and to argue the need for the broader introduction of systematic techniques so as to support the student design process

Designing for arthritis and activities of daily living : a taxonomic review of hand grasp techniques in a domestic context

The essential daily actions performed by humans in undertaking everyday chores are often referred to as activities of daily living (ADLs). ADLs frequently involve interactions with equipment, tools, products, and appliances to facilitate independence in one’s senior years. Industrial Designers generate this equipment and, hence, it is desirable for designers to understand the range of hand grasp postures employed by older persons, particularly when afflicted with declining dexterity. The objective of this review is to synthesize the significant knowledge available in the literature concerning human hand grasp taxonomies, and to identify how existing studies can aid and inform future research into hand grasps, particularly of older persons with arthritis of the hands. The review includes a search of hand grasp taxonomies by using search engines including Google Scholar, Academia, and ResearchGate, and searches of journals available at two university libraries. Titles reviewed include those related to the fields of industrial design, ergonomics, biomechanics, gerontology, rehabilitation, rheumatology, and osteoarthritis. Robotic hands, artificial and prosthetic limbs, and haptic technology are also included as studies in these fields investigate the normal function of the human hand as the benchmark for manufacturing and assistive device design. This review identifies there is a knowledge gap regarding the relationship between hand grasp taxonomies, product design and ADLs. The result of this exploratory literature review is presented in a tabular format to inform new product development and will support future research concerning the methods and instruments used to gather data on hand grasps for usability of domestic tools