Lessons Learned Year Two:
Teaching Interdisciplinary Product Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago
Stephen Melamed, IDSA, Adjunct Associate Professor of Industrial Design; Principal, Tres Design Group
Albert L. Page, PhD, Professor of Marketing, University of Illinois at Chicago
Michael J. Scott, PhD, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, University of Illinois at Chicago
Introduction
Last year, at the 2003 IDSA NEC Conference, the authors of this paper introduced the academic design community to a new interdisciplinary product development course (IPD) that they were teaching together for the first time at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In this paper, the authors share with the academic design community some of the lessons they have learned from the first two years of teaching the course. These lessons focus around the effective functioning of interdisciplinary student teams, of which industrial designers are important members as well as contributors to their team’s end product.
Image (C) University of Illinois at Chicago, Interdisciplinary Product Design
 Craig Mackiewicz |
 Jack Kelley |
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