APPROACHES TO TEACHING PRODUCT DESIGN TO ENGINEERING STUDENTS

3D computer aided design (CAD) and 3D printing seems to have developed to such a degree that the students in engineering courses are made to believe that they could attempt to design all aspects of a product. Mastering the total aspect of product design and development may take a significant part of one’s career. In an earlier paper, the author put forth a need for degrees that are hybrid, which may represent the real world nature of design in the built environment today. Such a programme is offered at a master’s level in several universities in the world, mostly as collaboration between design, engineering and business units of that university. While hybrid undergraduate programmes that combine aspects of design and product development engineering, may take a while to be offered, there needs to be an intermediate solution to help set the tone for successful product design courses at a bachelor’s level for students of engineering. This paper touches on a framework for hybrid degree programmes to benefit students who are keen to be engineering designers, and describes the author’s experience in team teaching a product design module, for the first time, to year 4 students of the Design Stream from the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. The paper concludes with a discussion on the author’s views of teaching the course in industrial design for engineering students.