All-round Designer

All-round Designer is an intensive project that focuses on engineering, product experience or innovation during a 15-week period. You collaborate in teams and work on your personal design. The project leads to a concrete product, a convincing concept or business proposals for participating industries. Which specialization will you choose?

Engineering  

Execute a full scale design process and get in depth knowledge and experience in the workings and making of a product. You will follow subjects in: 

• Biomimicry: Learn from nature how to solve engineering challenges. When it comes to problem-solving, nature has a 3.5 billion-year head start on humans. In this course you learn a methodology to apply biomimicry in a design process.
• Functional testing: Learn how to design experiments and do research if ideas for functions will work in real life.
• Factory excursions & Design Rules of Production Techniques: Conduct research for design rules of the manufacturing techniques suitable for your design and apply these rules in the project.
• Mechanical Strength Analysis: Prove that your product will hold the forces applied on them, by assessing the critical points in the design and calculating the mechanical strength.

Product experience 

Execute a full scale design process and focus on the customer and how they experience a product. You will follow subjects in: 

• Consumer Experience: Learn more about the experiential psychology of consumers and apply it to assignments.
• Design Research: Embedded in the project we will offer knowledge about how to research consumer experience aspects and the communication of cultural meaning through design.
• Meaningful Design: You will do design research and an assignment on communicating meaning by the use of design tools, such as colour, shape, and material.
• Product Context: Introduction to the design of a context to support the use of a product.

Innovation

• Context Discovery: After receiving the request for innovation from a client you start to explore what business you are in. Look in the past, present, and future for the internal and external perspective. Analyze the business model, company culture, relevant trends, markets and technology.
• ​​​​​​Concept Validation: Run (design) experiments to find a profitable and sustainable product market combination. Using build-measure-learn loops and interactions you validate through feedback the worth, desirability, feasibility and the market.
• Scaling up: Write a design brief for future product development with a provisional program of demands. Provide the client a viable business case with a scope and planning for further design and engineering.

Ready to kick-start your career as a professional designer? The module Professional Life provides all the tools you need to successfully start your career. Besides learning how to create, check and enhance your portfolio and using social media professionally, you will also learn about the ins and outs of running a small business. 
Topics covered include:

• The design office
• A professional LinkedIn page
• Your portfolio
• Choosing a job
• Applying for a job
• Pitching
• Meeting alumni
• Protecting your ideas
• Networking
• Website setup
• Start-up subsidies

Roll up your sleeves, because in the module Designing Interactive Products you will create your own interactive prototype! In order to do so, you will acquire the tools, knowledge and skills for designing and prototyping interactive products. We will cover subjects such as:

• User-product interaction / Interaction Design
• User experience
• Sensors and actuators
• Programming Arduino
• Prototyping

During the module International week, you will undertake a real life, one week, project together with other international students. The objective is to create a tangible project result in a very short time in an international context.

Your project is assigned by an external client. Generally this project will be more in the
conceptual phase of a product development project.

For the Open subject you are free to choose an activity or subject that is relevant to the general purpose of the exchange programme All-round Designer. Your choice must be approved by the programme coordinator. Hobby projects are excluded.

Foreign students can instead attend the introduction and language programme (check your Learning Agreement).

Complete your exchange semester or year by taking one or two cross-departmental modules. You will receive ECTS credits when you complete a module successfully.

• Behavioural Change in Organizations
• Cambridge English B2 or C1
• Drama and Improvisation
• Dutch Language
• Dutch Society
• Economic Mindsets
• Innovation Research Competences for Urban Development  
• Intercultural Awareness
• Personal Leadership (7 Habits)

Want to know more about the exchange programme of All-round Designer? Check the course catalogue for more information about matters such as assessment and teaching methods.

Read the course catalogue