Observing Life Style

The Industrial Design Department in the Faculty of Design and Architecture, Universiti Putra Malaysia was established in 2000. Since the last 11 years of operation, the department has developed and expanded tremendously. The department has successfully graduated more than 350 professional designers who are equipped with significant design knowledge and relevant design skills. These graduates are ready to serve the nation and face real world challenges. During their 3 year-tenure with the department, these students were exposed to various design problems and complex human lifestyle situations which had served as case studies and examples. These experiences assisted their quests to develop new products to fulfil human needs and enriching the environment for local and international market. Many design outputs have been presented and evaluated in several international competitions, exhibitions and seminars. To date, some products have won medals and gained recognitions thus placing the university’s reputation at international level. Good design ideas may come from many creative sources of inspirations. In many conventional design processes, designers still depend on ideas from prominent experts or scientists. In order to assist with new product developments based on concrete issues, many design projects have found inspirations about users from marketing resources. The department found the development of Design Research, especially through Participatory Design methods, could engage a designer with the eventual users by enhancing the knowledge about users and their environment. These findings provided new knowledge about consumers and their target market which could not be obtained effectively from literature by reading.

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