Introduction

Intending to share

It has been said that the best way to learn is to teach, and that the best teacher is one who knows that they are always a student. I have found both of these philosophies to be true in my brief but enjoyable times spent sharing my experiences with students of industrial design.

I have taught at the Art Institute in Seattle, Washington, at Istanbul Technical Institute (ITU) and Özyeğin Üniversitesi (OzU) in Istanbul, Turkey, at the Middle East Technical Institute (METU) in Ankara, Turkey, and at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington, where I graduated in 1993.

I have always felt an appreciation for those who have gone before me, eager to learn from their lessons and avid to avoid some of their letdowns. It is with this outlook of sharing that I prepared the following essays on a few aspects of the design process. They were written during my first weeks at ITU, in the spring of 2000, as I strove to inspire the students by sharing professional experiences, and hoped to leave something of benefit after my departure.

The junior level students were embarking on a corporate sponsored project in which they were asked to design any digital electronics product. The broad brief left the students rather overwhelmed with even choosing a project, let alone how to approach developing it. So the first essay deals with the issue of choosing a project, while the remaining writings then provide advice for the next phases of development, roughly in chronological order.

The theme of this effort was to raise the students' awareness that they are not designing just tangible products or services, but more importantly . . . the experiences those products and services provide. It was an effort to instill in them the value of knowing the deeper 'why' of design, above and beyond the simple 'what' of design. This is a skill through which I believe everyone can gain a broader perspective on life, and on what we are contributing to it as designers.

1 · Stimulating creativity with responsibility

2 · Understanding users and their desires

3 · Generating innovative concepts

4 · Developing ergonomics and visual form

5 · Designing for production

6 · Communicating design professionally