Integrating design and bridging activities of the engineering and the design college: Merging language cultures, creativities, and perspectives

This paper describes a unique and an innovative pedagogical experiment conducted between engineering and design faculty. The goal of the experiment is to create innovative bridges between student design and creative activities and projects that would converge and unify two different approaches: Engineering and Industrial Design. In this class, third and fourth year students from Material Engineering and Electrical and Computer engineering are teamed up with the students from the graduate level Industrial design studio. Together the teams are assigned to a major industry sponsored design project. This paper discusses the class concept, execution, outcomes, reflections, surprises, and will provide discussions on designing, implementing, and modifying such classes. This work mixes students with different academic levels from three departments of the engineering college together with the first year graduate students in the college of Design. They are all working on a semester long industry sponsored design activity. The paper describes the goal of the experiment, the implementation, and the unique findings of the experiment. In particular, this paper focuses on early results of this pedagogical experiment. Discussions are provided about the issues of implementation, identification of the hurdles, difficulties, and the commonalities. Possible approaches and paths to make such classes possible in diverse environments and cultures are provided. Faculty, students, and industrial client reflections and observations are included. Finally attempts to bring about some guidelines for initiating, conducting daily activities, project planning, and ways for bridging the cultural gaps between the seemingly separated fields are described.