My responsibility to teach industrial design students and non-industrial design students started more than 25 years ago. A combined studio of senior mechanical engineers and senior industrial designers was the inception of a lifelong educational challenge. How can we find ways of teaching, mentoring, and guiding students to apply the design process to be creative in their own discipline? This tension between curriculum and coursework spawned a 10-year longitudinal experiment of teaching the same design process in two different courses: Junior level industrial design studio and an elective course for junior-level or higher, non-design students. The course material, emphasis on traditional peoplecentered methods, and final outputs pursued the same goals – find innovative solutions to the given problem. The final output for achieving these goals differs because of the differences in the student’s previous education and experiences. But the common processes achieved appropriate innovations by utilizing a visual matrix as a design tool and method of practice.