Education Papers

IDSA publishes a selection of peer-reviewed academic education papers each year. These are collected during a community-wide open call period when design educators and practitioners submit materials for review by a group of judges serving on IDSA’s Academic Jury. The program also helps provide content for the annual Education Symposium, where some authors are invited to present their work from the stage to a live audience. To view the full Education Papers jury please visit meet the jury page.

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COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT: EXPLORING COMMERCIAL AND NONPROFIT OPTIONS Michael Caston, MID, IDSA | David Klein Metropolitan State University of Denver Collaborative design projects between industrial design programs and community organizations offer many benefits and present several challenges. Community engagement is
Michael Caston, David Klein
Metropolitan State University of Denver
An academic initiative called Design Assistance for Entrepreneurs invites local inventors to become the hub of an energetic student design team focused on making the inventors’ vision to fruition. Among the challenges that could make this type of collaboration
Percy Hooper
College of Design NC State University
As school budgets are being cut, a design leader implements the unique project based pedagogy with the need for unique furniture to create a curriculum to empower students. This project will span across five, 8 week “mini-courses” of 90
Lauren Georgian
Philadelphia University
Influencing the Maker Space
Today’s consumer demands product customization and low cost. Digital fabrication technologies enable both. The rapidly growing movement towards digital fabrication has placed makerspaces around the globe in ever-increasing numbers. These spaces provide an existing structure for the distribution of
Kevin Phaup
College of Arts and Letters University of Notre Dame
Industrial Design education is going through a rapid evolution with more design schools incorporating entrepreneurship elements into their curricula. More students are making use of internet resources and tools such as crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, 3D prototyping/printing services, and other web-based
Jose Rivera-Chang
California State University Long Beach
Teaching Undergraduate Students the Value of Design
As industry is beginning to recognize the importance of cross-disciplinary teams, it becomes more relevant for the members of the various disciplines to appreciate the value each member brings and for there to be an environment of mutual respect.
Seth Orsborn
School of Management Bucknell University
Design thinking was called a failed experiment and design thinking was declared dead. Design thinking was introduced as a prototype and like most prototypes testing it exposed weaknesses.  Two weaknesses that were revealed early in the design thinking experiment
Paul Skaggs
College of Engineering and Technology Brigham Young University
Designing Technologies For and With Older Adults
Incorporating technologies in product design can provide promising opportunities to better assist older adults. Traditional design approaches may not be sufficient when designing technologies informed by the physical, perceptual, and cognitive decline that humans experience with age. Contextual Design
Grace Cha, Sidney Brinson, Jessica Lee, Claudia Rebola
Georgia Insttiute of Technology
Benefits and Challenges
This paper examines benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary collaboration and it’s role in university pedagogy. A variety of social, technological, and economic factors have been rapidly changing our world, and this has reshaped processes of new product development. Contemporary
Lauren McDermott, Prasad Boradkar, Renu Zunjarwad
The Design School, Arizona State University
In-market Prototyping as User Research
This presentation will examine the increasing prevalence and importance of “in-market” or “live” prototyping in product design.  Over the past several decades, product development cycles have shortened radically.  In fact, in many cases there is no longer a cycle
Todd Corlett
Philadelphia University