Design Course
Product Design 1
An introductory course
by
Importance of Explorations
The pull-along wood-toy group was asked to work on a variation of a simple eccentric mechanism to save crucial time in developing and proving new mechanisms. Lifestyle wire product group was asked to look into the lifestyle products and were asked to decode their beauty with words. The wire group was also advised to make scaled or 1:1 models in Al or GI wire as imagining and visualizing the drawn wire forms was difficult. Along with writing the design brief, all students were suggested to make the quick-scaled models of their ideas.
The main intention of letting students to decide on the topic in the given framework and also letting them to select the user and user profile for their topic was to develop an ownership of the project and end result. As Prof. Bapat told them the end result of the Introduction to Product Design assignment will be their own creation and in one way their own child which should have that ‘WOW’ factor.
While the students were writing their initial design brief with user at its center stage Prof. Bapat also shared gadgets and toys from his collection of objects like - LED lamps, pull-along wooden toys, and pull-along plastic toys. He also shared his previous real-time design consultancy work for industries, with students. The intention of showing various interesting gadgets, contraptions and case studies to students was to widen their vision and to make them appreciate design in a way that only a designer can. Prof. Bapat also made a silent point about the expected output quality of the Introduction to Product Design assignment by showing his own old case studies to students.
