I studied mechanical engineering for my undergrad, and I’m looking at applying to graduate school to study product design. I would prefer a program that has some engineering aspects, but I’m having a hard time finding very many. So far I’ve come across the Stanford Product Design program and the Innovation Design Engineering program at Royal College of Art in London. Are there any others that you know of?
Any advice and insight would be welcome. Thanks!
University of Pennsylvania has something similar (I think is is call PISD? Not sure). It’s basically a graduate program in product design for people with an engineering undergrad.
I’m starting to look for a grad program for myself too; I am also a MechE major. But I think I am going to go with something more design oriented. Probably start considering a second bachelors too, but not sure yet. Anyway, good look with your search!
I’m in the same boat, Industrial Engineering background looking to switch into Product Design.
USC has Mechanical Enginering with Product Design emphasis but it seems very traditional to me. I have a friend in the RCA/Imperial College who says its very self driven and Studio Based. They have maybe one visiting lecturer speak a week and the rest of the time in is studio. Lots of frustrating critiques too but she chose it over Penn IPD because it was the least traditional. She did MechE at Berkeley btw.
Berkeley has the I-School but its very Media oriented. Maybe look at ID programs that have technical aspects to them or at least a nearby engineering school?
Theres Carnegie Mellon MII-PS as well.
Thanks for the input, guys.
I looked at the Carnegie Mellon program and it looks like a great one, but appears to be more geared toward the product management side of things. As for the the Berkeley program, I definitely want to keep it hardware centric, rather than media or software. I took a quick look at the UPenn program and it looks intriguing. Definitely going to dig deeper on that one.
In regards to getting a second bachelors, I know a guy who did ME and went to Academy of Art to get a second bachelors in ID, and he highly recommended that route. He said going with a second bachelors gives you the full ID spectrum of knowledge, which you wouldn’t get from doing a masters in ID without already having done ID for undergrad. I personally don’t want to go down that route, but I think it is a personal decision. Worked out well for him but may or may not work out well for others.