The educational programme of the Department of Industrial Design (ID) at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) distinguishes itself by its foundational duo of focus, and educational approach, namely:

• Focus: intelligent systems, products and related services for social/societal transformation
• Educational approach: competency-centred learning

Focus

The department concentrates on the design of intelligent systems, products and related services, which addresses aspects such as adaptive behaviour, context-awareness and highly dynamic interaction. The traditional focus of industrial design on products is moving more and more towards systems. At ID we see systems as adaptive environments in which humans can interact with intelligent products to gain access to services provided. These intelligent products are connected to each other and the surrounding system to achieve a new type of user experience. Especially the shift towards the complexity of systems and the non-physical aspects of services requires different competencies from designers.

Being intelligent means that the adaptive behaviour is based on the situation, context of use and users’ needs and desires. In particular we focus on opportunities that are of benefit to individuals, societies and different cultures worldwide. This implies that intelligence incorporates an ethical dimension. However, our contemporary culture has lost a unifying ideology (Branzi, 1989). Therefore, we believe that designers have to not only develop the next generation of digital systems, products and related services with which people can pursue their lives, but also investigate what kind of life and society we (designers, users, industry, society, …) want these products to support (Hummels, Ross and Overbeeke, 2003). When is it beneficial to us and what makes it so? Moreover, the complexity of these new systems asks for a new type of designer being on the edge of design, engineering and (social) science (Bartneck and Rauterberg, 2007).

These envisioned innovations cannot merely be technology-driven, or based on needs of users in existing product ecologies. As new technology is potentially capable of transforming our world in ways that we cannot know of beforehand, we educate students who are able to apply new technologies in innovative, daring and preferably beautiful ways, driven by a design vision of how our (social) world could be in the (near) future, and based on explorative studies and solid research with users in the social-cultural context (Hummels & Frens, 2008). Moreover, it requires an intense relationship with industry to turn this design vision into reality.

Educational approach

Industry is interested in hiring academically trained Industrial Design engineers, who are able to lead and work in multi-disciplinary teams, bringing the different perspectives together, and to bridge the worlds of new technological and business strengths on the one hand, and the societal and user desires, needs and opportunities on the other. The approach of becoming such an integrator was also scrutinised when looking at the societal developments with respect to learning. The rapid changes of present-day society and the fast increasing amount of knowledge, asks for self-directed and life-long learning. Functioning effectively in this society and the new workplace requires the ability to deal creatively and flexibly with large amounts of constantly evolving information and the ability to learn continuously. In addition, our students need to become experts who are required to work in teams, to cooperate with experts in various fields, and to participate in complex networks of information, resources and instruction.