Product design engineering – a global education trend in multidisciplinary training for creative product design

Product design is the convergence point for engineering and design thinking and practices. Until recently, product design has been taught either as a component of mechanical engineering or as a subject within design schools but increasingly there is global recognition of the need for greater synergies between industrial design and engineering training. Product design engineering (PDE) is a new interdisciplinary programme combining the strengths of the industrial design and engineering. This paper examines the emergence of PDE in an environment of critique of conventional engineering education and exemplifies the current spread of programmes endorsing a hybrid programme of design and engineering skills. The paper exemplifies PDE with the analysis of the programme offered at Swinburne University of Technology (Australia), showing how the teaching of ‘designerly’ thinking to engineers produces a new graduate particularly suited to the current and future environment of produce design practice. The paper concludes with reflections on the significance of this innovative curriculum model for the field of product design and for engineering design in general.