Product Development and Design
Location of Program: Singapore Year: 2014Program Director(s): Brian Jensen and Mark Colton
Participating Major(s): All Engineering and Technology Majors
Summary:
Students from BYU work in conjunction with students from both the National University of Singapore and Penn State University to design a product to be used in Singapore. Throughout the experience, students learn principles of global product design and practice applying them in an international setting. They work on teams with students from various backgrounds to solve real-life problems and learn how to communicate despite cultural and geographic barriers.
Recap of the Year:
Leadership Development
This program is structured to feel like the real world. Students work together in a classroom setting to come up with solutions to specified problems. This setting provides many opportunities to develop the leadership skills of communication and teamwork, and then to practice those skills in different environments and with many types of people.
Global Agility
This year, students in this program were given the opportunity to be on an international team and work closely with people from various cultural and geographic backgrounds. Although initially it was difficult to communicate, as students began to understand each others’ background, they were more successful in working through these barriers. At the end of the project they worked together to prepare a final report. This was a valuable experience in learning to appreciate other cultures in order to have better communication and overall efficiency.
Technical Competence
Students began this program by attending a class and researching design ideas, both of which were a good foundation for the technical skills they would practice in their teams. Their teams consisted of engineering students with varying technical abilities. This created a setting of learning and growth in areas including induction, magnetism, heat transfer, material selection process, risk analysis, and requirements definition. Students who participated are well equipped to design a product in the future.
