We did a few of these in our first year. We were given a few lectures on different aspects of form such as restful vs active, symmetrical vs asymmetrical, and then we had to create forms out of foam that explore those characteristics. Then later that year we were given a list of actions such as push, pull, twist, and push to talk, and we had to create foam models that implied those actions to someone who has never seen the model before. I’m assuming that this is the type of projects your professor was talking about. They were pretty abstract assignments, but they taught us about how much form influences how you interact or feel about a product.