Slava Kozlov, Philips Design

People & Trends into Design

Set of practical assignments

2

Background

In 2004 Department of Industrial Design has commissioned Philips Design todevelop a set of practical educational assignments for the students.

The assignments should have combined theoretical knowledge about ‘peopleresearch’ practices and socio-cultural research into the future for design withsome practical exercises done by the students.

The Philips Design’s team has developed a set of assignments which wasbased on the ‘people & trend research’ practice accumulated by the companyover years, and tuned it to the TU/e’s needs and conditions.

All the assignments offered a combination of learning from teaching andlearning by doing, as well as individual and collective work. The assignmentswere structured as practical projects conducted by student teams supervisedby the tutors.

The slides below are not an exact description of the curriculum, but ratherthe highlights of the key qualities and the structure of the assignment set.

3

Introductory lecture

Prior to the course, the team from PhilipsDesign read a lecture about the past andthe present of conducting ‘people &trends’ projects by the company,illustrating ‘Strategic Design’ practicewith a number of real projects.

The lecture introduced the ‘high-design’approach practices by Philips Design,i.e., human focused, research based andmultidisciplinary design.

The lecture also presented a number ofinteresting cases and a reflection on thereasons of their success (or a luck of it)

F is for the Future

4

people in context

culture scanning

social trends

integration & translation into design

Intro to People & Trends into Design (*)

presentation and evaluation

Introand

project intake

(*) see the next slide

5

This intro assignment required a 40 hours of work for students over aperiod of 5/6 weeks. Every week the team of tutors gave a 2h lecture(combined with an evaluation of the previous work of students at a laterstage) and the students had to then do 6 hours of individual/group workper week.

From the very beginning the students were divided into a few workingteams (4-6 people per team), with a total amount of students 24-30. Eachteam worked on its own project defined during the first meeting. Every weeka new layer of information was introduced (e.g., people research, or socio-cultural analysis etc) and the students had to then practice it, bothindividually, and as a group.

At the end the team had to integrate all the obtained knowledge and data,and develop their own proposition (innovative future-focused solution) andpresent it to the entire course.

Intro to People & Trends into Design

6

The earlier presented ‘Intro into People & Trends’ assignment was designedfor the first/second year students, and only provided a basic informationabout the methods and tools used ‘people and trend’ practice.

For the students who wanted to gain deeper knowledge and master theirskills further, the team has developed a set of four advanced assignments,each focused on one of the modules explained in the Intro assignment(therefore, participation in this Intro assignment was a requirement for thelater, advanced assignments).

Each of these advanced assignments followed roughly the same structureand a way of delivery as the Intro one, with of course a different content.

See the next four slides highlighting the scope of the assignments.

Set of Advanced Assignments

7

persona creation

value-laddering

presentation and evaluation

1. People Research Track

observationsintegration & translation into design

introand

project intake

8

cultural analysis

mood boards

culture scanning

2. Culture Research Track

integration & translation into design

presentation and evaluation

introand

project intake

9

human needs & values

roadmaps & scenarios

social trends

3. Societal Developments Research Track

integration & translation into design

presentation and evaluation

introand

project intake

10

Communication with USPC

eval

human focused ideation

presentation

briefing with P&T info

4. Integration Into Design Track

integration & translation into design

presentation and evaluation

introand

project intake

11

Evaluation and Feedback

The courses (including Intro into People & Trends into Design and most of theadvanced assignments) had been taught in the period of 2005-2007, with totalenrollment of 200+ students.

The course were extremely well received by the students, who wereconsistently giving the highest marks in their annual assessments ofeducational programs.

The course was discontinued by the TU/e due to the financial reasons,with great regret.