Connecting business, industrial design

In line with a growing trend to link industrial design and business instruction, Rhode Island School of Design has forged a new relationship with Babson College, building on a 14-year relationship with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management.
RISD and MIT offer a business development course together, run on RISD’s side by Professor Matthew Kressy, who has taught the class for eight years. Now, while continuing the MIT relationship, Kressy will be pulling double duty with Babson, too.
Kressy said the joint venture with Babson came from a close relationship last year with his MIT teaching partner, Sebastian Fixson.
“We had a good rapport. He’s a part-timer at Sloan, so he needed something to do in the fall. And he ended up at Babson,” said Kressy. The two schools had been looking for a project on which to work together. “So he presented the idea to Babson, and of course they liked it.”
For the course, titled “Product Design and Development,” about 15 RISD and 40 Babson students will be split into teams, each with a design objective. Some of those designs will be passed down by corporate sponsors, who provide funding – usually $1,000 per student team and $500 for each team in the new program – and problems to solve.
In the past, students have designed a cargo carrying tool for Segway, a low-cost incubator for the nonprofit Design That Matters, products for Nokia and even a special cocktail party tool that combines a cup holder and a plate.
“Their mission was to solve the problem of being at a cocktail party and having a drink in one hand and a plate in the other, so they couldn’t shake hands with anyone,” said Kressy.
The designs are interesting, but the program’s most basic function is to familiarize students with their counterparts, said Fixson.
“Business students tend to focus on the bottom line,” he said. “That may not be an issue that the design students think of in the first place.”
It seems Kressy, who runs a design firm that also handles outsourcing and materials production, is the perfect candidate to teach such a class. He’s a 1988 industrial design graduate from RISD and brings to the class his own experiences as a designer – he founded Designturn Inc., based in Wellesley, Mass. – working with Asian manufacturers. But he still learns from the students.
“One of the great things about Sloan – about teaching at Sloan – is I’ve become a student of Sloan for the last eight years,” said Kressy.
Fixson, too, has overlapping experience – although he’s a business professor, his background is in engineering.
“I started out as an electrical engineer and ever since, through my training, I have moved toward business and the integration of engineering, design and business,” said Fixson.
Customer need – touted as one of the four staples of the class experience – is taught directly from Kressy’s experiences with need-based design. He presents a pictorial story about one of his market-research trips, participating in a military live-fire training drill at Fort Polk, La.
From that trip, he designed a valve that allows soldiers to mix varying concentrations of juice into their Camelbak backpacks.
“The soldiers love it because their drinking water is heavily chlorinated,” said Kressy. “And their superiors love it because the soldiers are getting the electrolytes and other things they need.”
Because of the corporate sponsorship, the class offers possibilities for students to sell their ideas. Those who develop products that can be patented – such as a re-sealable paint can licensed to Sherwin-Williams – split the royalties with whichever college patents it, but “if the students opt to pay for it themselves by hiring a patent attorney, they can get all the royalties,” said Kressy.
Although transportation can be costly and aligning the schools’ schedules can be tough, the program is worth it, said Fixson.
“My experience with these types of courses is [that] one of the biggest benefits we get out of them is working with students from different schools,” he said. “From the learning aspect, the teamwork is key.” •

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