It is accepted that industrial design practice has changed, and that design
education is also changing to reflect realities of innovative new product
development (NPD). The paper presents a model innovation process, called
Front End Industrial Design (FE-ID), which is employed in undergraduate
teaching and learning. It has been developed to tackle the pedagogy of the
broad arena of pre-brief, front end innovation activities in commercial NPD.
Both macro and micro views are presented of the FE-ID process, providing
an overall perspective but also reflecting on some of the particular (micro)
activities which are considered critical for success, but which are notoriously
difficult to develop. The FE-ID process has been found to be effective in
developing knowledge and abilities in students to enable them to operate
further up the NPD food chain, more in a business and brand context of ideas
and propositions - not simply realised products and services.
DesignED Asia 2012 Conference
