Product design and innovation: a new curriculum combining the humanities and engineering

This paper describes a new curriculum, Product Design and Innovation (PDI), which aims to balance the traditional approaches of Industrial Design and Engineering Design with the approach of Science and Technology Studies (STS). Students will develop a general engineering knowledge through meeting the degree requirements for Engineering Science, and a set of analytical skills for understanding society and culture through meeting the degree requirements for STS. But the backbone of PDI is the sequence of design studios, one every semester that aims to integrate all three dimensions of the program-the technical, the aesthetic, and the social-with an emphasis on creativity and design process. The design studios help students to explore and develop their creativity while building a portfolio of design experiences continuously throughout all four years. We describe the background for how we arrived at this curriculum, the curriculum design, and experiences in offering the first design studios.