Industrial Design Education for High School - Breaking the Rules

Traditional industrial design education focuses primarily on creating industrial designers. Competent designers. Innovative designers. Designers that think out of the box. While design programs differ, the focus is essentially the same. Create industrial designers.

School districts are looking at industrial design education for their high school students, but for entirely different reasons. While it would be wonderful for high school students to fall in love with industrial design with the dream of becoming a designer (this does happen), the vast majority do not. But this is not a failure. Quite the contrary.

Industrial design education in high school can be the ultimate motivator. Students that don't engage with traditional curriculum, become extremely engaged with industrial design. Why? Researchers know project based learning engages. And industrial design education is project based learning. How does it go beyond mere project based learning?

In a word, it's cool. In a sea of un-cool subjects and curriculum, designing cool stuff is hard to resist. OK, it should be said that designers do more and should do more than design "stuff". But this is high school. Give the student a break.

For the college student in an industrial design program, problem solving and the creative design process are essential tool box skills to be learned and honed - for the program and for one's career. But for the high school student, in an industrial design program, problem solving and creativity are life skills.

While industrial design programs that teach user-centric design enable the student (and eventually the industrial designer) to engage the user as a key element of the design process with the goal of optimizing user experience, for the high school student, user-centric design teaches empathy.

Math, science, and writing are an essential part of design education, yet their role in college level curriculum is essentially supportive. Designers need to know these skills, but for the high school student, that either lacks this knowledge and ability, or shuns it, industrial design education can "sneak in" these skills and make them relevant.

Industrial design education curriculum for high school and for college are very much the same. But what students take away is very different. In this way high school industrial design education does break the rules. But as high school students might say, some rules are meant to be broken.