Understanding Product Engineering
When you look at an object, what do you see? The exterior is what meets the eye, but this course aims to explore what’s behind, underneath or inside. To take a physical object and do a product autopsy, with the goal of developing an understanding and appreciation for how products are made.
Think of a car. It may have a sleek exterior, but there’s so much more to it than you see at a glance. Through the process of disassembling products, we learn what’s under the surface.
This course aims to inspire an appreciation for physical objects, the notion of looking at them from a different perspective. It’s about understanding products and product architectures. How are products physically made and how are parts connected with each other? What is the function of each part? Thinking about a part and then rethinking it in a different material. What would it look like? How would it function in another material?
Get a basic understanding of mechanics and computer aided design. Learn to analyse a product and all of its interconnections. Explore the importance of sustainability and not disposing of products so easily.
Ultimately, gain an appreciation for physical design which is useful for the concurrent Design Project 1 as well as other future design projects.
Course Coordinator's perspective
“I hope this course gets students to see products from a different perspective, to think about them differently than they did before. When they walk through a shop to look at a product not just as something to buy but to reason how it’s made, how it’s used, how it’s manufactured, why it exists. I really want to get students enthusiastic about physical objects.”
Bas Flipsen