Design for Interaction: Consolidating the User-Centred Focus in Industrial Design Engineering

Abstract

In 2002, the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at Delft University of Technology started a new master programme, focusing on user-product interaction as a basis for designing new products and services. This new programme stems from a range of student graduation projects, and collaborative research with industry, in which insights and methods from the behavioural sciences in combination with new technologies led to new concepts for products and services. In this four semester master programme, called ‘design for interaction’ (DfI), the school consolidated its experience in a curriculum of theory courses and design and research projects that systematically provided the skills and knowledge for designers to operate in this research-intensive area of modern product design. Designers from the Master program Design for Interaction help clients to design innovative and appropriate products and services by placing the key aspects of human-product interaction, i.e., use, understanding and experience, in the centre of the design process. The Master in DfI is specialised in analysing and conceptualising of and in designing for human-product interactions in relation to the physical, cultural, technological, and societal contexts in which the product is used. In this paper we describe the philosophy and goals of this programme, its structure, and illustrate the core essence of user-product design with some recent graduation projects. We conclude by reflecting on the lessons we learned, not only the successes, but also the problems and challenges ahead we have encountered.