The Power of Design

Industrial Design Juniors design the next generation of products for Powerhouse

Industrial design is all about discovering how a product fits into a market, or how a current product can be improved. But design isn’t an individual task. Many times designers will work with engineers, graphic designers or even other industrial designers. Teamwork is a crucial skill. That’s why at Jefferson, students create design firms within the class. Containing four or five student, each firm selects a name and works together to solve a variety of projects.

This year for the first firm project, juniors of the program were asked to analyze an existing generator to improve upon. Several factors were considered in the design such as “rapid deployment” or making the generators start up as quickly as possible. Each firm was also given a specific “lens” to look at their generator; some examples were wet environment, sporadic use, and environmentally friendly.

Toto’s Final Presentation board

Each firm spent two months dissecting the current generator and designing their own generators based around their given scenarios. The final presentations were given in the DEC forum to a group of prospective high school students from New Jersey whose teacher, Ygor Carvalho is an alum of the industrial design program, Class of 2002.

Interested in visiting the school or shadowing an Industrial Design Student? Contact Mark Havens the Associate Director of the Industrial Design program at Mark.Havens@Jefferson.edu