Company involvement
Within the curriculum
Throughout the master programmes there are several courses that include projects commissioned by external parties, which can be companies but also NGO’s, hospitals or municipalities for example.
Where the Graduation Project and Joint Master Projects offer the opportunity to students to set-up their own collaboration for execution of an assignment for a company, courses like Advanced Concept Design, Advanced Embodiment Design (IPD courses), Exploring Interactions, Interactive Technology Design (DfI courses) and Design Strategy Project (SPD course) include projects for companies, acquired by the faculty. Examples of such projects can be found under “Programme”. Through these projects, student get the opportunity to work for companies such as Unilever, L’Oreal, Philips, Samsung, Daimler, KLM, Bang & Olufsen, Giant or Lego.
Often, companies are involved in multiple student projects, sometimes alongside (PhD) research, and some projects are successively carried out by student teams within different courses, or different ‘versions’ of the course. An example is the BioCoach which is the result of a project executed for the company Biomet. The concept was developed in the Exploring Interactions course, further developed in the Advanced Embodiment Design course, and is now patented.
Example of a project commissioned by Biomet
This student movie shows the outcome of the AED project which was the continuation of a concept developed during the EI course, on a rehabilitation coaching tool for orthopaedic patients - 2013
For some topics, the faculty extensively cooperates with partners from the industry, in research and design projects. Medisign and Aviation design are examples of such topics. More information on these thematic cooperations can be found here.
Furthermore, there are many electives and for example the shared master course Generic and Professional Skills, in which companies are involved (occasionally or regularly). Also, many courses include guest lectures from alumni and experts from the field of profession.
Outside the curriculum
ID, the study association of the faculty of IDE, yearly organizes activities in which students can get to know companies and even collaborate with them, ranging from lectures, workshops, speeddates, or the yearly Industrial Design Engineering Business fair, to Cases on Tour (a four day national study tour in which students creatively solve cases for companies), or Flightcase (a three week international case tour). Master communities Infuse (DfI), Futury (IPD) and Studio 360 (SPD) organize more master specific activities in collaboration with companies. The companies that participate in such activities are for example Etsy, Heineken, Microsoft and Wacom.