Designy : an online multimedia platform for supporting prototyping in residential product design education

Abstract

In order to support a variety of situations in which students might seek additional prototyping support during project work, resources were designed to utilize a combination of photo and video formats. Annotated images are used to introduce technical language, comprehensive narrated videos are used to show prototyping equipment operation, and short looping animations are used to show detailed steps of prototyping techniques. Providing students with multiple media formats allowed them to choose which resources best suited their support needs. This platform was tested in two product design courses: 2.00b Toy Product Design, an introductory product design course taken mostly by freshman, and 2.744 Product Design, a skills-focused course taken mostly by graduate students. In 2.00b, students complete project work with significant staff supervision, whereas most of the project work in 2.744 is unsupervised. For this reason, testing in these courses provided an opportunity to evaluate the platform in course settings with different supervision models. Usage data showed that around half of the students in each course exhibited activity on the platform, with a core group of 24 students (27% of the student population) in 2.00b and 28 students (35% of the student population) in 2.744 contributing most of the platform activity. To characterize student use of the platform, use case descriptions were collected from students during interview sessions with both 2.744 students (n = 10) and 2.00b students (n = 9). Students cited using the platform to support planning prototypes, for preparing to work in the shop space, for exploring the landscape of available tools and techniques afforded through access to the workshop, and to directly support the execution of prototypes in the workshop. Course staff members had activity on the platform comparable to student activity, and used Designy to prepare for advising students on project work and as a source of multimedia resources for preparing lecture materials. Overall, providing the platform to students removed typical roadblocks to prototyping work, such as limited access to staff and difficulty operationalizing prototyping techniques learned through other means. Although some students prefer support of prototyping efforts through face-to-face interactions, Designy was found to contribute to student feelings of increased confidence and comfort while in the workshop, allowing students to work more efficiently and progress their project work further than if they did not have access to the platform.