Changing the Perceptions of Making

Barnhart, Betsy

Traditional Industrial Design sponsored studios (when a corporation partners with a student design studio) can quickly become design for hire studios which limit student learning outcomes as well as successful outcomes for the Sponsor. In assessing instruction practices in sponsored studios, traditionally success is limited to products moving directly into production. By reframing the studio into an incubator and in-line studio setting students could work in the same fashion as an in-house design studio, with mass diminutive ideation focusing on performance initially rather than aesthetics causing an increased standard for success. Because students would be concentrating on editing down a mass amount of variables with swift precision using raw but effective mockups, time would not be wasted on improving the craft of an initial, potentially ill- developed concept, leading to more risk projects with market disrupting potential rather than just an aesthetic or materials update going into production.

In a multi-disciplinary studio setting students from Industrial Design, Apparel Merchandising and Design, and Kinesiology, partnered with a corporate sponsored studio instructed in the framework premised above. The outcomes were a success with the studio functioning beyond a studio for hire scenario to learning objectives being met as well as aspects of projects moving forward into to development and projects moving directly into production as well as applications for patents. This paper investigates how studio culture can be reframed to create a diverse range of success as well as what specific instruction techniques, making techniques, and studio culture lead to this success.

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