SJSU Case Study: Industrial Design + Mechanical engineering Collaboration

KOHAR SCOTT: Good afternoon. And thank you for joining me for my presentation of our industrial design and mechanical engineering collaboration case studies. My name is Kohar Scott. And I'm currently an assistant professor at SJSU after teaching as adjunct since 2015. My background is in industrial design, with a special focus in CMF-- or color material and finish.

My design passions revolve around how cutting edge technologies can help solve problems in design I'm currently exploring how AI, AR and VR technologies can be integrated into current curriculum. My teaching philosophy focuses on bridging the gap between industry and education.

As an industry professional and educator, I feel it's important to approach education with an eye for how their learning applies to the real world. Coming from a private design school background, I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to teach at the state level, where design education is available to a wider audience and our students might simultaneously be taking physics and anthropology classes for example.

For over 30 years, San Jose State has offered a solid industrial design education with a lot of student time spent in our central shop in classrooms where they're able to build and mock up their ideas. During lockdown, SJSU was one of the first institutions to respond to the pandemic by shutting down or severely limiting access to our hands on learning facilities and on campus activities.

As a result, our students returned back to their homes of origin, sometimes across the world. This challenged us to find creative ways to pivot our instruction and curriculum to teach remotely and virtually. I learned about Fusion 360 and Generative Design while teaching with Jeffrey Smith at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill.

The disrupting forces of the pandemic provided an opportunity at SJSU to introduce CAD early in the design course roadmap, due to limited access in the central shop and the need to still develop products and evaluate form on screen. We did our best to reflect processes they were missing-- such as cutting on the band saw-- with digital operations in Fusion 360.

Much like many other institutions, disciplines at SJSU are siloed. And while collaboration is encouraged, there is very little to motivate the effort. And many obstacles make it difficult or impossible in practice. And still the world is changing, becoming more collaborative and the lines between fields are constantly blurring. Design and engineering in the built world do not happen in a vacuum independent of each other. So why would we approach education in these fields as if they do?

At the education level, we have very little knowledge about what the other discipline teaches. And if there are overlapping topics, such as packaging design, they're often taught completely separately with no interaction from other disciplines. Part of my commitment to education is to break these silos by introducing cross discipline collaboration in higher education.

Partnering with Autodesk and using Fusion 360 has been a great platform to help make this happen. The design industry has changed over the past 100 years at least. However, design education has not changed as much. The history of design education roots back to 17th century Europe.

Students were treated like pre apprentices and still today are assigned abstract projects that represent principles and skills. Whereas a chemistry student must first learn the periodic table and mathematics before applying it to chemistry, design is taught through projects and applied principles. When before we might have had a design champion with a vision like Raymond Loewy designing entire systems, vehicles, experiences, now design and product development more often happens in teams of more than one.

The automotive industry is the best example of this, where you might have one designer designing the tail light while another is designing the door handles. Disciplines in industry must work together to accomplish goals of product delivery. Today companies are more open and sometimes even seek cross-pollination.

You might find an engineering position advertising for an industrial designer because of their need for user centric solutions. A graphic designer might work on a kiosk display making recommendations on the user interaction in the built world and not just designing 2D graphics.

When one group or department tosses the deliverables over the fence to the next department, problems continue unsolved, innovation is less viable, and timelines and product development suffers. Some companies are marketing driven, like the toy industry, while others are injured engineering driven, such as the pro audio market.

Either way, when one is leading the other and there are players in the dark until later in the product development cycle, it's a recipe for stunted innovation. Empower engineering with design and design with engineering. And with the right team, the possibility of innovation expands.

I'm hoping to reverse influence industry through fostering a more integrated workforce of graduating students, starting with design and engineering. In my career, I was very fortunate to work with world class teams who also saw the value that I brought to the playing field with design. It was early in my career that I realized the value of all our creative inputs early in the specification of a product development proposal.

When new product proposals came through the pipes, I was successful in inserting ID into the very beginning phase of definition equal at the table with marketing, sales, engineering, and insisted that our manufacturing partners were there as well. It was a tremendously successful change in our operation. And I bring this holistic approach to design education and am committed to intersecting our disciplines in collaboration when possible at SJSU.

The challenge in design education is that designers are not engineers. And engineers are not designers. Our curriculum necessitates a focus on the skills and knowledge needed to perform the tasks of the major. However, exposure and collaboration could bridge the gap between what students have time to learn individually under each major.

Since I started full time in 2020, I have explored and found new ways to integrate cutting edge technologies and new workflows and design. Being situated in Silicon Valley, I found it's important for our students to be exposed to all that's possible and even emerging. I will share with you our journey to collaboration through the following case studies.

The opportunity to expand our software knowledge to include Fusion 360 came in the form of my sustainability course. Traditional design workflow puts consideration for materials and manufacturing after the design is already decided. We turned the design process upside down and introduced CAD early as an iterative tool in leveraging the power of AI through Autodesk Fusion 360 software. Incorporating Generative Design studies leverages the ability of the software to come up with multiple viable solutions early in the design phase, thus thinking impact first instead of leaving it as a last priority.

The rationale for using Fusion 360 revolved around the ability of Generative Design AI to light weight and strength optimize. In addition to the intention was also to expose students to materials and manufacturing through Fusion 360's aPriori feature, which helps calculate the manufacturing cost of a part based on the materials selected. At this early stage in my career and experience, I had no collaborative partners. And we dove in headfirst as best we could.

Di Jin's Autodesk education team-- Tim Paul, Gaby Waldman-Fried, and their Autodesk ambassadors were instrumental in our quick ramp up and did a phenomenal job supporting students and faculty. We held a series of short workshops to introduce the Fusion platform as an iterative tool. We used a book called The Ocala practitioner to learn about the environmental impact of our material and design choices and started by using the eco-design strategy wheel to generate ideas and concepts, prioritizing ecology first.

These are examples of how students incorporated Generative Design in their concepts. Most of the students in this class had already taken to SolidWorks classes. The culminating work was displayed as a self-guided walking tour at the history San Jose park in San Jose, California. Given our isolation during the pandemic, the ability to generate AR models was nice to be able to get a sense of form in space, albeit through AR.

Final models were viewable in air triggered by QR codes on posters throughout the park. We collaborated with a graphic design studio class, led by Philip Crana and Derek Truong. And their students create their students created a unifying website that helped visitors navigate through the tour and poster artwork or print.

This is the workflow I use to create the AR models. This was a virtual gallery loop on display, introducing the posters on a monitor at the beginning of the walking tour. At the end of the term, and an impressive effort on the part of my students, what was clearly missing is the what, why and the how of Generative Design. I underestimated the complexity of the input parameters needed to constrain the model and prepare for AI calculations, which was magically happening in cloud and disconnected from the inputs that students were experiencing.

What was clear is that students could benefit from scaffolding knowledge about the forces at work and defining their generative studies. It wasn't until after the term ended that I learned more about topology optimization. And I realized that this could be the missing link to connect what Generative Design was doing in the cloud, rather than waiting hours for a generative solve to see the results of a parameter change. With topology optimization, students can see in real time and connect the difference with the color and model changes on screen.

We had an opportunity to fabricate the winning design of a kiosk display for the Thompson Gallery in the art building of San Jose State to display postcards from a multidiscipline design competition. Comparable to what would happen in real life outside of education, design and mechanical engineering combined efforts in order to validate the design for public use and to fabricate the model together in the mechanical engineering maker space for a fall 2021 gallery opening.

Unfortunately, COVID protocols kept the maker space unavailable for us to build. However, the positive experience of collaboration has launched us into more possibilities of cross-discipline and multidiscipline curriculum. My course on advanced materials seemed like an ideal place to layer in foundational knowledge towards topology optimization.

So I approached the professor for chemical and materials engineering, Professor Oscar [? Kelish, ?] with a case study project around a product called the hip hook. Gaby Waldman-Fried and Tim Paul introduced topology optimization in my advanced materials class. The chemical and material engineering students were invited, as well as their professor Oscar [? Kelish. ?]

We talked about meshes and shape optimization mean different things to design and engineering. Polygon meshes might be familiar to designers who use 3D surfacing software, such as Alias, Rhino, and Blender, for example. Gabby and Tim did a great job of pointing out the connection between polygons and finite element analysis. It's my hope that as we continue to layer in new engineering concepts, the connection between the load bearing vertices and polygon geometry will help designers develop products with longer lifespans and using less material-- raw materials-- which ultimately leads to less heart failure, decreased part cost, and more sustainable practices.

The case study collaborative effort went OK, but didn't draw the engagement in results I was hoping for. It wasn't enough to just get the students and faculty in the same room and excited about collaboration. I spent a lot of time and energy to get this far. But what was clear is that I missed the part about interlinking deliverables to make engagement more motivated and fruitful.

As a design professional, you're motivated to ask questions and find answers to champion your design intent. But as students, they don't yet understand each other's values yet. So I will need to go into greater depth introducing the roles of designers and engineers. I also think that in designing the activities next time, I will consider the end goal that showcases each of the disciplines skills first, and then create the assignments that require each to do their part similar to what it would be like in an actual consultancy or a corporation.

This leads us to the Kreative Kitchen. At this point, the need for collaboration and the value of what it offers our students is gaining traction at SJSU. Autodesk education lead, Di Jin was instrumental in introducing me to Dr. Vimal Viswanathan, who in turn brought in education advisor, Maureen Smith. And we're piloting an independent study course for fall with two students from engineering and two students from industrial design to apply their subsequent skills to a sponsored project.

The purpose of this pilot course is to provide students with dedicated time and course credit for collaborating cross discipline and design related projects. This studio style course will provide students with a real world experience of working with other disciplines, such as design, engineering, business, and graphic design.

Students will explore technology and experimental product design conceptualizations in a way that fosters attention to more sustainable practices and technology integration. By pooling resources into one course, students will benefit from exposure to skills and knowledge base otherwise unavailable through their distinct siloed curriculum.

For example, the ID program does not require coursework in engineering. However, students will greatly benefit from working with engineering students to produce designs with greater consideration for manufacturability. Inversely, engineering students will greatly benefit from the creative product visualization tools and skills taught in the ID curriculum.

The project sponsor this fall is the Aerospace Museum of California in Sacramento. They have asked students to redesign their display for museum artifacts with materials and processes that make it possible to fabricate in-house. This design for fabrication project is a great way for undergraduate students to integrate what they've learned so far in applied design and engineering.

This studio style engagement will better prepare students for graduation and entering the workforce. The first phase of crosslinking our disciplines in this pilot course is to better understand what we teach. I'm working with the current chair of the mechanical engineering program, Dr. Vimal Viswanathan, assistant professor, Amir Armani, and College of Education advisor, Maureen Smith, to align learning objectives and track outcomes.

I created a repository for our respective disciplines to upload relevant lectures for us to find common ground and how and where we can crosslink our subsequent lectures for our students in other courses. I'm meeting with ME faculty weekly to keep the conversation going as we brainstorm and dive deeper into what's necessary and possible.

The premise of unschooling is that when the student is interested in something then they learn faster and retain knowledge better. How would this look if applied to higher education? With the expansion of new technologies, methodologies of form, and design evaluation and workflows, who's to say that design education might not also change? I feel it's important to expose students to cutting edge software and technologies, even if it takes longer for industry to adopt them.

The Wacom or pen tablet is a great example of this technology shift during my seven years at SJSU. In the beginning, we were requiring that students purchase and use a pen tablet. However, many of the design consultancies in the area were not yet using them in their offices. Within five years however, pen tablets have become more and more standard and digital sketching quality has catapulted in leaps and bounds because of the technology.

I'm excited to see how Generative Design and 3D scanning are able to influence and expand our design and engineering capabilities in stride. The master paths option would allow for students to choose how they produce the deliverables for a given phase of development. This idea arose from a conversation with Doctor Viswanathan and Michelle Smith, whose experience and insights have already been invaluable to this project.

Generative Design is a great example of how a student would or could replace part of the development phase with AI generated solutions to evaluate. Another way students could integrate new technologies is by using 3D scanned data to make design modifications in CAD. We have other technologies also available for students to explore within this pilot program.

In this example of 3D scanning, we have a new workflow that we're exploring to move more fluidly between hand modeling and CAD. The exercise of designing a speed form comes from the automotive industry practice of building a clay model on the surface of a mirror. The mirror is useful to evaluate symmetrical forms. Building only half the model saves time.

Students build a half model in clay. And then the challenge is for students to learn about cross-sections and rebuild the full scale mirrored form by hand, using the cross sections. There is a big leap in understanding necessary for students to complete this with success. If we could integrate 3D scanned-- if we could 3D scan the half clay model and then mirror it in Fusion, the hypothesis is that students could quickly perform section analysis using Fusion 360 and more successfully understand the relationship between form transitions and cross-sections.

The interest generated from the Kreative Kitchen keeps expanding into new interest in collaboration. It's exciting to find new faculty and me and other disciplines of like mind who share similar values. Led by creative ambassador Cynthia Kao, the community table project aims to showcase the diversity of San Jose and raise awareness around food insecurities.

Statistics reflect that one in five students on campus struggle with food insecurities. The grant funding from this project will offer multiple workshops open to students from all SJSU departments to cross-pollinate skills. For example, the art department will host a workshop on papermaking from food waste scraps, while ID will offer traditional mold making and casting workshops, juxtaposed with alternatives and experimental workflows using 3D printed molds and casting with food waste, paper pulp, and biomaterials.

This is the first time student work will be showcased in the SJSU Thompson Gallery. And we're all hoping that the efforts on this relevant social theme will promote the value of interdisciplinary collaboration in the future. In order to start the conversation, students from mechanical engineering classes as well as packaging and graphic design were invited to milestone critiques, discord channels, lectures, and workshops.

Time conflicts between disciplines is the first hurdle. So I set up a discord channel to allow for low stakes connection at any time. We're integrating this into the Kreative Kitchen and several other classes as well so that students can connect outside the classroom. We also use a MIRO board to post milestone presentations. And this is accessible virtually for our team. So students from other majors can jump on at any time and see progress or provide feedback.

It's not really happening much yet. But the platform is there, which does-- which when it does, it'll be available when it gains momentum. Mechanical engineering Professor Ed Cydzik joined our ideation milestone review to provide feedback for student concepts. Students shared with the professor their design process, software, and techniques.

And Professor Cydzik provided some feedback from a mechanical engineering and design perspective for design for manufacturing perspective. Given the limitations to central shop access, we found more and more ways to leverage the tools we do have to instill design and engineering curriculum in accessible ways. The availability and decreased cost of 3D printers has made it a great tool for students to still learn techniques critical to product development, such as molding and casting.

The pandemic's effect on supply chain has also affected the availability of urethanes, a typical material used in the industrial design development process. This shortage has been a positive influence on our search for even more sustainable practices. And we're looking forward to experimenting with biomaterials, 3D printed molds, and more sustainable alternatives to silicone molding-- or silicone for molding.

This point of experimentation in lab work will be a great place for collaboration to occur, if timing aligns with mechanical engineering students this term. I have to mention that while I'm committed to education and excited about the advances of technology and what it might mean for our students and future, this is often the reality.

This is often the reality I face when it comes to my materials and manufacturing classes. Collaboration is still a challenge for students and faculty. And we're only just now starting to make progress in the right direction. Bridging the gap between industry and education can work both ways.

And it is my hope that our graduating students will enter the workforce with an appreciation and understanding of the value each discipline brings to the table and influence as much expansion as we're benefiting from industry partnership, like that of Autodesk. Thank you for taking the time to listen to my presentation today.