Program Details : University Catalogs : University of Minnesota

DES 2701 - Creative Design Methods

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Fall

This class is an introduction to a variety of tools and methods used in developing new products, services, and experiences. The focus of the class is on the early stages of design which includes user research, market research, idea generation methods, concept evaluation, concept selection, intellectual property, and idea presentation. Students will learn the divergent and convergent design thinking process to frame problems, and generate, refine, and communicate ideas. Students work individually and in groups applying the content taught in lecture to multiple assignments and a semester-long design project.

PDES 2702 - Concept Sketching

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Fall

This class is an introduction to manual sketching techniques, specifically for the communication of conceptual product ideas. The focus of this class is on free-hand perspective drawing. Students begin with basic principles, simple shapes, light and shadow, and later learn how to combine forms to create conceptual objects with realistic perspective. In this class, there are weekly drawing assignments and presentations.

PDES 3711 - Product Innovation Lab

Credits:	4.0 [max 4.0]
Course Equivalencies:	PDes 3711/PDes 5711
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Spring

A hands-on experience in integrated product design and development processes. Elements of industrial design, engineering, business, and humanities are applied to a semester-long product design project. Cross-functional teams of students in different majors work together to design and develop new consumer product concepts with guidance from a community of industry mentors. prereq: PDes 2772 OR Junior/Senior (any major) or permission from instructor

PDES 5711 - Product Innovation Lab

Credits:	4.0 [max 4.0]
Course Equivalencies:	PDes 3711/PDes 5711
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Spring

A hands-on experience in integrated product design and development processes. Elements of industrial design, engineering, business, and humanities are applied to a semester-long product design project. Cross-functional teams of students in different majors work together to design and develop new consumer product concepts with guidance from a community of industry mentors.

ANTH 4121 - Business Anthropology

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies:	Anth 4121/Anth 5121
Typically offered:	Every Spring

Anthropological/ethnographic understandings/research techniques.

ANTH 4035 - Ethnographic Research Methods

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered:	Every Spring

History of and current issues in ethnographic research. Research projects, including participant observation, interviewing, research design, note taking, life history, and other ethnographic methods. prereq: 1003 or 1005 or grad student

CSCI 5127W - Embodied Computing: Design & Prototyping (WI)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Typically offered:	Fall Even Year

In this course, you will learn and apply the principles of embodied computing to human-centered challenges. Through a semester-long team project, you will learn and demonstrate mastery of human-centered embodied computing through two phases: (1) investigating human needs and current embodied practices and (2) rapidly prototyping and iterating embodied computing solutions. One of the ways you will demonstrate this mastery is through the collaborative creation of a written document and project capstone video describing your process and prototype. prereq: CSci 4041, upper division or graduate student, or instructor permission; CSci 5115 or equivalent recommended.

DES 3131 - User Experience in Design

Credits:	4.0 [max 4.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Fall

Introduction to theories/principles of human interaction with designed objects. Focuses on affect/emotional quality of designs. Objects, interfaces, environments. Digitally mediated experiences.

DES 3321 - Furniture Design: Exploration

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies:	Des 3321/DesI 3040
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Fall

Explore the inclusive, egalitarian nature of furniture design! Gain a foundational understanding for buying, selling, designing or studying furniture. We collectively explore the topic via lectures, reading, writing, discussion, field trips, visits from working professionals, and a classic design exercise.

DES 4322 - Furniture Design, Practice

Credits:	4.0 [max 4.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Fall & Spring

The hardest things about the creative act is learning how to start something before you know what it is. The simplest objects are always more formally complex than the mind can accurately imagine. This course teaches design thinking through furniture constructed using a fast, loose & ad-hoc "children-club-fort-building" method of discovering & visualizing while making. Direct-construction design is tangibly satisfying and will provide powerful context for all other scales of creative, design and planning methods. Your results will not be conventionally good-looking, but you will make real & functioning cultural things. All exercises will be dependent on connecting to ideas beyond commonly recognized boundaries of the furniture. Think "Chair-ness, not Chair." You will be taught basic welding and wood joinery to provide fast & viable structural frames, "surfacing" methods in wood, foam and fabric composites, and an introduction to mold making and material casting. You do not need to be good at making, but you must be game to try. Craft is important so-far as basic structural usability is attained. Ideas will always trump material "correctness."

DES 5185 - Human Factors in Design

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F or Aud
Typically offered:	Every Fall

Exploration of the theories and methods that influence the assessment of physical, cognitive, social, and psychological human factors, and the analysis of user needs with application to designed products and systems that interact with a human user or the human body. This course is an introductory overview to the theories and concepts of Human Factors and their application through the methods of User-Centered Design. Typically, the class is comprised of students from a wide variety of disciplines and backgrounds. Course material is explored through readings, lectures, discussions, case studies, and course projects.

EE 1301 - Introduction to Computing Systems

Credits:	4.0 [max 4.0]
Typically offered:	Every Fall & Spring

C/C++ programming constructs, binary arithmetic and bit manipulation, data representation and abstraction, data types/structures, arrays, pointer addressing, control flow, iteration, recursion, file I/O, basics of object-oriented programming. An Internet-of-Things lab is integral to the course.

ESPM 3603 - Environmental Life Cycle Analysis

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies:	ESPM 3603/ESPM 5603
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Fall

Concepts/issues relating to inventory, subsequent analysis of production systems. Production system from holistic point of view, using term commonly used in industrial ecology: "metabolic system."

GCC 3005 - Innovation for Changemakers: Design for a Disrupted World (GP)

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Course Equivalencies:	CEGE 5571/GCC 3005/GCC 5005
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Periodic Fall & Summer

Do you want to make a difference? We live at the intersection of COVID-19, racism, economic recession, and environmental collapse. Now is the time to make an impact. In this project-based course, you will work in interdisciplinary teams. You'll develop entrepreneurial responses to current social and environmental problems. You'll develop tools, mindsets, and skills to address any complex grand challenge. Your project may address food insecurity, unemployment, housing, environmental impacts, equity, or other issues. Proposed designs for how you might have a social impact can take many forms (student group, program intervention with an existing organization, public policy strategy, or for-profit or non-profit venture) but must have ideas for how to be financially sustainable. Community members, locally and globally, will serve as mentors and research consultants to teams. Weekly speakers will share their innovative efforts to serve the common good. A primary focus of the course is up-front work to identify the ?right? problem to solve. You will use a discovery process, design thinking, and input from field research to addressing the challenge you choose. You will build a model around the community?s culture, needs, and wants. By the end of the class, you will have a well-designed plan to turn your project into an actionable solution if that is of interest. This is a Grand Challenge Curriculum course. GCC courses are open to all students and fulfill an honors experience for University Honors Program students.

MGMT 3015 - Introduction to Entrepreneurship

Credits:	4.0 [max 4.0]
Course Equivalencies:	IBUS 3010/MGMT 3010/MGMT 3015
Grading Basis:	A-F or Aud
Typically offered:	Every Fall & Spring

Fundamentals of entrepreneurship. Career paths, including new business start-ups, franchising, acquisitions (including family business succession), corporate venturing, and entre-preneurial services. Legal structures for new business formation. Aspects of business law/ethics.

MGMT 4171W - Entrepreneurship in Action I (WI)

Credits:	4.0 [max 4.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Fall

Two-semester course. In fall, students identify a business oportunity, develop concept, determine resources required, and launch the business. In spring, students implement business plan, manage business, and determine exit strategy. prereq: 3010, [4008 or concurrent registration is required (or allowed) in 4008], completed coursework in business core, CSOM upper division, approved application

MGMT 4172 - Entrepreneurship in Action II

Credits:	4.0 [max 4.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Spring

Second of two-semester sequence. In fall, students identify business opportunity, develop concept, determine resources required, and launch business. In spring, students implement busienss plan, manage business, and determine exit strategy. prereq: 4171

PDES 2703 - Concept Visualization and Presentation 1

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Spring

This class builds upon the fundamentals taught in PDES 2702 Concept Sketching. Students learn to draw complex geometries and organic forms and how to add shading, shadow, text and backgrounds to enhance their drawings. Markers and other physical tools are introduced in this class as a means of further refining a sketch. In the second half of the semester, students learn to digitally improve their sketches and are introduced to the fundamentals of digital sketching with a drawing tablet and digital sketching software. As this class is taught in smaller sections, there are many opportunities for students to present and critique work. The basics of design portfolios are covered at the end of this class.

PDES 2777 - Product Form and Model Making

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Spring

This class is a hands-on introduction to prototyping tools, materials, and techniques for product design. Students learn the basics of working with foam-board, foam, and wood to create physical models and will be introduced to different surface treatments and finishes. Assignments are designed to build a sense of craftsmanship and attention to detail. There are multiple individual projects focusing on different materials and techniques. Each project involves practicing oral presentation and group critique.

PDES 3704 - Computer-Aided Design 1: Solid Modeling and Rendering

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Fall

This class provides an overview of computer-aided design (CAD) methods for product designers. The primary software covered in this course include Solidworks and Keyshot. These programs are used to make three-dimensional computer generated models of product concepts and render the models to appear photo-realistic. This class may also cover additional 2D and interaction design software.

PDES 3705 - History and Future of Product Design

Credits:	3.0 [max 3.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Spring

This class covers critical milestones in the history, evolution, and trajectory of modern product design as well as the human relationships to consumer goods, including production and consumption. In some assignments, students have the opportunity to apply the topics discussed towards imagining the future of the product design industry.

PDES 3706 - Designing for Manufacture

Credits:	4.0 [max 4.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Spring

This class is a hands-on overview of common manufacturing methods, tools, and considerations for product designers. The focus is placed on plastic and metal related processes specifically machining, forming, casting, and molding. Throughout the course students apply the theory of design for manufacturing (DFM) and design for assembly (DFA) to a series of design projects. This course also covers related topics such as material identification, bill of material, cost estimation, part drawings, tolerances, fasteners, part finishing, and sourcing parts.

PDES 3715 - Design and Food

Credits:	4.0 [max 4.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F only
Typically offered:	Every Fall

This class is a hands-on introduction to principles of design applied to the food industry. Students develop new food concepts working in a kitchen classroom with regular advising from local chefs and food industry experts. The class is structured into four modules: creative design process, flavor and texture, visual aesthetics, and user experience. In each module students learn different design and food preparation methods and apply them to a design challenge. Several restaurant outings are incorporated into the curriculum.

PDES 4193 - Directed Study in Product Design

Credits:	1.0 -4.0 [max 8.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F or Aud
Typically offered:	Every Fall, Spring & Summer

Independent study in product design under tutorial guidance. prereq: Undergrad, instr consent

ME 2011 - Introduction to Engineering

Credits:	4.0 [max 4.0]
Grading Basis:	A-F or Aud
Typically offered:	Every Fall

Skills critical for practicing engineers. Mechanical engineering, engineering design. Visual, written, and oral communication forms. Computer-based design tools. Substantial design projects, including prototype construction. prereq: CSE pre-major

University Catalogs

Product Design Minor