Innovation and Design of Products

Code

ME-IDP1

Version

5.0

Offered by

Mechanical Engineering

ECTS

Prerequisites

The course is for students from the 6th semester or equivalent in an attempt to enhance their product design and development skills from the end user and business perspectives.

The student is required to be familiar with basic engineering skills within the areas of 1) Materials and material processing technologies; 2) Design methods including technical drawing; 3) Basic business economics and teamwork.

The course also welcomes students with qualifications in the fields of industrial design, marketing, or similar.

Main purpose

The main purpose of the course is to strengthen student’s acquaintance with engineering procedures within the development and assessment of mechanical products from both re-design and conceptual design perspectives. Human-centered design thinking, business assessment and innovation strategies will be of emphasis.

Knowledge

Upon the completion of the course, the student will acquire knowledge:

To define human-centered design.
To describe user experience (UX) design methods.
To identify the fundamental aspects of good product design.
To find, characterize and select the most relevant methods/ tools for user needs identification, acquisition and interpretation.
To identify and choose between different design approaches.
To define and formulate customer value proposition.
To classify, interpret and implement business models for product design.
To reason system interconnectedness exploration is essential in design thinking.

Skills

Upon the completion of the course, the student will be able.

To extensively apply User Experience (UX) design methods throughout a design project.
To implement correctly the selected methods/tools to achieve their designated goals for data analysis/synthesis from the product redesign and human-centered design perspectives.
To relate, evaluate, and reason the key findings derived from the various undertaken analyses and syntheses.
To identify and translate user needs to product design requirements.
To assess solution propositions from business, risk and functionality perspectives.
To implement disruptive thinking to reflect on design solutions and to reframe design problems.

Competences

Upon completion, the student will be familiar with and be able to implement Design Thinking models to start, plan, innovate, and complete a design project to a conceptual level by taking into account the relevant multiple aspects including system thinking and sustainability, user experience and business innovation.

Topics

Teaching methods and study activities

The student shall expect 138 hours of workload distributed across various study activities including lectures, group work, workshops and design projects.
There will be 3 lessons per week for 12 weeks. Pre-lesson preparation, if assigned, is required.
Ongoing prototype making and testing is necessary for progressive feedback.

Resources

Evaluation

Examination

Prerequisites for exam:
None

Exam type:
In the exam for this course, you must submit a 2-page product description along with a visualization of your product. This assessment evaluates your written communication skills and ability to visually represent your ideas. Your visualization can be either a PDF or a video in MP4 format.

All assignments must be submitted via Wiseflow by the specified deadline.

Oral Examination in two sessions:

1) 15 minutes of group presentation of the key findings from the mandatory design project.

2) Following this, there is a 60-minute period allocated for group discussion, during which questions are individually posed to each group member. This timeframe also includes voting.

Examination counts for 100% of the final grade.

Internal censor

Tools allowed:
The students are permitted to utilize the visualization, the prototype and the 2-page submission, as well as course materials.

Re-exam:
Same as ordinary examination.

Grading criteria

The Danish 7 point scale

Additional information

Responsible

Christian Sommer / Flemming Bøge Østergaard Andersen

Valid from

01-08-2024 00:00:00

Course type

Keywords

Human-centered Design Thinking, Usability; System Thinking, UX Design Methods, Innovation Redesign Strategies, Business assessment, Disruptive Thinking