Situating societal challenges in an industrial design classroom

Designing for societal challenges requires not only traditional design competencies but also knowledge from other disciplines such as social science and engineering. In particular, designers should have the ability to take entrepreneurial action, demonstrate design leadership and create responsible designs. Design education has adopted the design studio approach to creating opportunities for design students to learn and practice design skills. However, scholars often criticize it due to its lack of scientifically rigorous. This paper discusses a teaching case in an industrial design class where design students learned to design for a societal challenge through a combination of different educational activities such as following lecture, participating workshops, conducting field research with end users and stakeholders, and giving presentations and receiving feedback from industry experts and academic staff. By combining a mixed-perspective, they got a better understanding of different stakeholders involved, created propositions with all parties in mind and were able to communicate their ideas clearly. In this way, stakeholders were informed, inspired and empowered to collaborate and create the intended innovations. By balancing the rationality and creativity in the design class through offering the theoretical foundations as well as the societal embodiment, this course aimed at equipping future responsible industrial designers with the desired competencies related to entrepreneurial action and design leadership.