Educational framework for interactive product prototyping

Abstract

When the design profession started, design targets were mainly static hardware centered products. Due to the development of network and digital technologies, new products with dynamic and software-hardware hybrid interactive characteristics have become one of the main design targets. To accomplish the new projects, designers are required to learn new methods, tools and theories in addition to the traditional design expertise of visual language. One of the most important tools for the change is effective and rapid prototyping. There have been few researches on educational framework for interactive product or system prototyping to date. This paper presents a new model of educational contents and methods for interactive digital product prototyping, and its application in a design curricula. The new course contents, integrated with related topics such as physical computing and tangible user interface, include microprocessor programming, digital analogue input and output, multimedia authoring and programming language, sensors, communication with other external devices, computer vision, and movement control using motors. The final project of the course was accomplished by integrating all the exercises. Our educational experience showed that design students with little engineering background could learn various interactive digital technologies and its implementation method in one semester course. At the end of the course, most of the students were able to construct prototypes that illustrate interactive digital product concepts. It was found that training for logical and analytical thinking is necessary in design education. The paper highlights the emerging contents in design education to cope with the new design paradigm. It also suggests an alterative to reflect the new requirements focused on interactive product or system design projects. The tools and methods suggested can also be beneficial to students, educators, and designers working in digital industries.