<p>A friend's son wants to major in Product Design. At his school, this major partially follows the Mechanical Eng. curriculum, and in fact you could get an ME degree with a Product Design certification. But the young man does not plan to take the full ME curriculum--just the requirements for the product design major.</p>
<p>How marketable is this major? Would employers see this as too soft to be valuable, eg. engineering lite? My friend knows nothing about the engineering field, and neither do I, but I told her I'd ask some smart people I "know." That's you CCer's!</p>
<p>The study of Product Design can also be followed through (and how I most commonly associate it with) the school of Architecture with a Bachelor’s in Industrial Design. I’m sure my thought process is because my brother did this. It was never thought of as ‘soft’, going this direction. I will say that the work he does now is far more related to industrial design.</p>
<p>Each university is different, so be sure to check. You may want to post this question in both the engineering and architecture forums.</p>
<p>It’s a very popular major at Stanford right now, and the graduates seem to be in demand. My S thought about product design but decided to go the straight ME route. He went to an on-campus job fair for ME’s the other evening and was a little disappointed because most companies were looking for product design people. Wonder if he’ll reconsider his major?</p>
<p>DS did ME and HCI (human-computer interaction)as undergrad then MS HCI. Now does robotics at an university but still related to Mech&HCI design . He wants to do more designing in consumer products but many of the jobs are industrial design (machines). </p>
<p>Lots of approaches to this. Mechanical. Art. Software. Apple products are a good example for mech, art, software, hardware fusion. </p>
<p>I think he’s good but he’s picky</p>
<p>Craigslist (free) linkedin (subscription) are good sources for job listings</p>
<p>It is a niche specialization. Companies like Apple specialize in not just technologically advanced products, but also in aesthetically and ergonomic designed products. It is also just not the products but also the packaging of the products. </p>
<p>Not every company would need product designers and some companies may not value product design. However, there are many companies that compete based on product design and a good product designer will always have opportunities. A product designer is to products (cars, computers, cell phones, washing machines…) like an architect is to buildings. They have to have some engineering knowledge and artistic talent.</p>
<p>As suggested, I posted this question in the CC engineering forum, on an already existing thread about the demand for the various engineering specialties.</p>
<p>Only one response so far, but the poster said a major with that title might be confused with something in the art field. I had wondered about that too, since it wasn’t called industrial design.</p>
<p>Art Center has consistently ranked highly in design curriculum in Design Intelligence renkings and has a program in Product Design which is similar to Industrial Design. When I hear Product design, I think of a consumer-based focus. Industrial design could be anything - better designed metallurgical stamps, improved industrial scales or sleeker toaster. Would assume the market was tied to what was growing in the country in which you reside. What are you designing - things that change fast? Are you an artist or an engineer?</p>
<p>Hmmm perhaps a student whose talents tend toward the conceptualization of how a part might look might lean toward Art Center or CCS or Cincinnati… the ID path while a student whose talents tend toward taking the conceptualization toward actual useability might benefit from a program entrenched in engineering. I know an industrial designer who has a keen interest in how things look on head-up displays and spends most of his day with the software engineers…there are multiple paths dependent on a student’s particular interest but to put it at the ten thousand level…someone has to conceptualize the widget and someone has to engineer the widget and there always has to be a left brain/right brain person who can interface between the two or at least in my experieinces this is how it shakes out.</p>