Investigating Industrial Design Students’ Expectations from Technically-Oriented Courses: With a Case Study on Electro-mechanical Applications

Abstract

This article provides information about multidisciplinary educational activities based on electromechanical product applications that can be conducted in university industrial product design departments and investigates the interests and expectations of students in such activities. These activities are carried out in various lectures and generally focus on the parts that make up an electro-mechanical industrial product, their assembly, product technologies, 3D modeling, electronics, software, hardware, prototyping. In the lessons, students are informed about various product technologies and systems, they are put together with real parts and they are adapted to the products they design. With this study, it is aimed that the students gain knowledge and experience about the effect of product internal structure and technologies on product exterior design. In this article, similar orientations in the world and related academic literature are examined first. The following pages describe the structure and implementation of the activities in our study. Afterward, the field study which was conducted to reveal the students’ thoughts about multidisciplinary activities is explained.