Students Hard at Work

I’m teaching a class this term down at New School of Architecture and Design in San Diego. I love teaching and now that I run my own studio I could make a little time for it. I’m teaching a studio class on PAN (Personal Area Network) accessories and products. I thought I’d post some of their work so far. We are about half way through. They had to do brand positioning (of an existing brand, including key user persona and brand design language mood board), then identify some areas that brand could expand in the PAN space, and this week they had to present their initial concepts. We are about half way through. I only have 5 kids in the class which is nice.

For those of you that are teaching. I’d love to see what your students are doing and what your class descriptions are!



Wow, 5 students is great. My college days had studio classes full of 20-25 students. Looks like a great opportunity for some portfolio-worthy projects!

Let us know how their ideas translate into the physical world. Will you be doing any prototyping of their concepts? I find the millenials and genZ kids are weaker in the uptake of proto skills due to their saturated time spent with computers.

agreed, that is why I’m trying to have them pin up as much as possible.e No powerpoints, even for competitive research, persona, and brand positioning type work. next week they get into physical mockups.

The following project image is a presentation from one of the 3rd year students I worked with in their 1st semester of their 3rd year here in Seoul.

The course is Industrial Design 2. They are challenged to tie together many of the skill sets they have been working on for the past 3 years. Design brief grocking, user research, mood boarding, concept sketching, 3D CAD, 3D printing, keyshot rendering, UX and final wall presentation/project storytelling. Their work must communicate with: other designers, marketers, engineers and manufacturing team members, and must apply the provided UX app controlled LED technology that is included in the brief. Formal branding as a skillset is introduced to the curriculum in the following semester, but students get a taste in this project with required preliminary UX design wire frames.

This is the first project of Junior Studio at CSULB. The five-week project was called Handle It.

The project summary was to “Develop a product/prototype that embraces and utilizes the ideas and principles of Universal Design for use at home as an entry into the USC School of Gerontology Universal Design Competition."

Solutions had to be backed up by a copious amount of research, a full-scale model, a poster, a presentation pitch, and a 20+ page process book.

Fun stuff :slight_smile:



another Tuesday of teaching. Here are my students presenting their work in the term to date.










Ryan T Genena…I am teaching Universal Design for the first time this semester. We are just past the midterm and heading into the final stretch. I’m curious to know how your projects were rated against any universal design criteria. Many of the projects I am seeing have varying degrees of sensitivity towards their universal user audience. Some more than others. I want to be fair and comprehensive in my evaluation of their efforts.

Can you share any final presentation evaluation criteria for student universal design projects?

Cheers from Seoul

I am one of the students in the class, however, I think this information from the syllabus will answer your question to my best ability.

“Designed solutions provide some kind of interface between the user, the object, and the environment. Examine the relationships between our bodies and the built environment. We will utilize both anthropometrics and field testing to design objects with which we physically engage our bodies.”

Research (20%), Visual Presentation (20%), Craftsmanship (20%), Process (20%), and Human Factors (20%).

You can also refer to the competition criteria at http://gero.usc.edu/udcompetition/.

edit: my peers also had significantly varying degrees of sensitivity. One of the criteria our professor tried to push us towards was to design with empathy. Here’s some more information on the assignment criteria from the project brief:

Option 1 - “Develop a product/prototype that embraces and utilizes the ideas and principles of Universal Design for use at home” as an entry into the USC School of Gerontology Universal Design Competition.
Option 2 - Choose your own adventure. Identify a product category with opportunities for ergonomic improvement and design a new product that overcomes the problems that you uncover during the research phase of the project.

some shots of the final critique yesterday








Final presentation fall 2017 - Product Design Process Skills (1st year - class size 32 students)

Final presentation fall 2017 - Universal Design (2nd year - class size 30 students)

This is a photo of a of the prototyping process of a project for my 3rd year Product Design students in their core studio which focuses on Sports Apparel and Gear this past Fall semester at the Wilson School of Design.

The project was focused on investigating articulation for movement using only woven non-stretch fabric (making it significantly more challenging) for a niche sport, and this group chose to work on splitboarding. The final jacket is waterproof, and is apparently going for field testing in the next couple of weeks.

We had the students re-set up their process for our new building opening, Yo! you will have to come visit soon. It was a 4 week project with 3 students in the group.
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really happy to read your coaching .very thankful for your teaching .what are the teaching you are conducting .