Designing the Future

 

What is the role of design in the modern world?  Does it only apply to decorating your bedroom, or could it be about something more?  Industrial Design is a highly interdisciplinary field, and I recently had the opportunity to see some of the most recent designers who are about to shape how we interact with the world.

What Is Industrial Design?

Mine is the world of nouns and verbs, of poetry and philosophy, and specifically as these all played out two thousand years ago in ancient Greece and Rome.  When our son decided to major in Industrial Design at Purdue University, I had to go to the department website to see what it was all about.  That, of course, was but a first step, and over the years that my wife and I visited campus and saw what our son was doing, I began to gain a better understanding.

My first realization that our son's undergraduate program of study would not be like mine was when he took us to one of his classrooms during his freshman year.  My experience of collegiate study involved classrooms with desks and the main library on campus, especially in the 870 and 880 section of the ninth floor.  His was a workshop.  This would be a hands-on course of study, one that involved math, art, history, and much more.

 

He and his class would learn to sketch and ideate, design using the latest software, and then realize their ideas in wood and metal, plastic and cloth, and of course, 3-D printing.

Design Daze

Each year the senior class of the Industrial Design Department hosts a day-long event to showcase their work.  They fill a gallery in Yue Kong Pao Hall of Visual and Performing Arts with their work and present throughout the day in sessions in a nearby auditorium to an audience of industry professionals, their own ID professors, and delighted families and friends.

 

As I listened to these young designers share their creations, all of which had been created to address particular needs, from a variety of medical issues to safety concerns in sports, from advancements in military technology to better ways for us to interact with the natural world, several things became clear.  Design is about far more than merely making a product attractive.  The field of Industrial Design is about solving problems.  It is about listening to people and applying science and art and creativity to making their lives better.  As I work with my own students and talk with them about their dreams for the future, Industrial Design has become an area that I have shared with them and will continue to present as a possible course of study for those with the imagination to help design our future.

Special Note

I love talking with the parents of my students, but it was a treat like no other to be on the receiving end when Steve Visser, ID Professor and Program Coordinator, and Assistant Professor of ID Jung Joo Sohn both made it a point to talk with my wife and me about our son.  They knew him as more than a faceless student and spoke to his work and his preparedness for entering the world of Industrial Design.  Thanks to their efforts and all of the Purdue faculty, our son has enjoyed two internships during his undergraduate career and has been hired by Midwest Studios for a position he will begin after graduation.