Introducing NPD to Fremd High School Students
This week we had the opportunity to introduce Industrial Design and a career in New Product Development (NPD) to high school students from Fremd High School in Palatine, IL. Thanks to the career counselors at this school, each year the students are given the opportunity to visit various businesses to learn more about different careers they can pursue after high school.
While the majority of the students had never heard of industrial design, a couple of them were either interested in CAD (the students currently work with AutoCAD), UI/UX design, or art as a discipline. Our team spent time discussing the different aspects of NPD, as well as giving them a tour of our studio and showing them the tools we use.
It has been our goal as a company in the design industry to educate students about careers in NPD because so many students go to college never knowing the field exists. We gave the students a series of questions to think about that might help them decide if design is the right industry for them. A few of them are listed below:
1. Are you curious about a lot of different things? Do you wonder why things are the way they are?
2. Do you like asking questions; making things better or easier?
3. Do you like making projects, creating art, or building models of ideas you have?
Industrial design is about solving problems and telling a story through design. It can mean you’re conducting research, developing design strategies, sketching your ideas on paper or a tablet, or developing prototypes to test your ideas (among a number of other things). The field has evolved so much and designers are continuously challenging their boundaries and becoming an integral voice in a number of different businesses and industries.
If you want to learn more about ID, you can check out Core77 or the IDSA (Industrial Designers Society of America) website. IDSA has a list of design schools on their site that proves to be a big help to students who are interested in pursuing a degree in ID. You can check it out here.
If you are interested in visiting our studio with either high school or college students, please contact Jessie and we would be happy to set something up. There aren’t very many high schools who have a focus on ID (see one of our past blog posts: Teaching Through Design in Grades K-12), and we were thrilled to have the opportunity to introduce the students at Fremd High School to this area of design. Thanks to all those who visited – we hope you enjoyed your time and discovered if NPD might be the field for you!