Industrial Design
Location of Program: Europe Year: 2016Program Director(s): Bryan Howell
Participating Major(s): Engineering and Technology Students Interested in Design
Summary:
Over the course of three weeks, students visited various businesses, art museums, show rooms and design schools across Europe. By visiting a range of businesses from large international corporations such as Tupperware, to small studio spaces like Antwerp Duo has, students gained a better understanding of the job market they will be entering.
Recap of the Year:
Leadership Development
The trip contributed to student leadership and development primarily by exposure to other designer’s stories. Study abroad participants heard from professionals how they managed the transition from school to work and ultimately ended up at their companies. They also received a lot of feedback as to what each company looked for in applicant’s portfolio.
Global Agility
Industrial design professionals coordinate with manufacturers from many different countries, and work on teams with people from all over the world. Students participating in the Industrial Design study abroad met representatives from multiple international agencies and learned just how globally interconnected their industry really is.
Technical Experience
Visiting design firms all over Europe left students with a better idea of what skills they would need to develop to get to where they wanted to be professionally.
Student Experiences
“There are important choices to be made about what factories you work with, and consistent back and forth communication is important to ensure that the product you’ve designed is what is actually being produced.”
“What impressed me was the range of things that were valued depending on the company. For example, for some sectors of the industry, being really talented at computer modeling is more important than in others. Some companies value the ability to quickly generate prototypes by hand or sketch well more highly …We got a better idea of what technical competencies and skills we specifically may want to pursue.”
