Designing for Human

Industrial Design Department is one of the three departments in the Faculty of Design and Architecture in UPM. It was established in the year 2000 when the first student intake for the Industrial Design program took place. Since then, the department has developed and successfully graduated more than 300 professional designers, equipped with significant design knowledge and relevant design skills, ready to face the challenge real world. During their study, students are exposed to various design experience to assist them in producing new products as well as to be competent to generate quality products for local and international market.

In current situations, most of their design outputs have been exposed and evaluated either in local or international competitions, exhibitions and seminars.Successful designed products come from many forms and sources of inspirations. One important element in early investigation to develope new design and product is by conducting User Research. In many conventional design processes, designers still depend on ideas from prominent experts. In addition, they need information and ideas to understand about users to develop concrete problem statements and issues for their new designed project.

To explore users’ needs and wants, the design methods include User Centred Design, Participatory Design and Contextual Design so that designers would be able to create inspiring designs that are holistic and interesting. These ‘methods’ in designing encourage design students to spark new ideas and to develop product designs for the real world according to current needs, demands and situations.

Ahmad Rizal Abd Rahman