Work in progress — Use-value and functionality versus aesthetics and experience: Inculcation of design ideologies in engineering and industrial design students

This paper compares how different student teams with engineering and industrial design backgrounds approach design problems and create design solutions. We collected data by observing team meetings throughout the design process. While students in both disciplines were essentially designing solutions for clients´ future needs, the design prompts were vastly different as was their subsequent approach. Preliminary results show engineering teams designed solutions based on the project requirements, issues of ultimate functionality, and client needs or interpretations of client needs while industrial designers focused on positive user reaction and aesthetics, working around ideas that incorporated unique or creative components to enhance the overall appearance´s appeal. In this study we found preliminary evidence that innovation occurs when the designer also takes on the role of the user; here the designer incorporates personal experience with cognitive tools to search the solution space for creative solutions.