Removing the Barriers: New Approaches for Industrial Design Students

KOHAR SCOTT: Hello. My name is Kohar Scott, and I'm presenting our discoveries of how students can ramp up quickly and find success with product development and sustainable design practice through strategic use of CAD, or Computer Aided Design. I'm currently an assistant professor at San Jose State University in the Industrial Design program, which is within the College of Humanities and the Arts. I've been teaching for over eight years now, 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 such as AI, AR, and VR can help solve problems in design and integrate into new curriculum to help prepare students for emerging workflows. 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.

Within the SJSU at large, 69% of students are considered part of the Underserved and Underrepresented Minority, or URM. Underserved can mean any and all of the following, according to the equity portal of the California State University, CSU-- first generation in their families to attend college, people of color, and Pell Grant recipients, which means that their annual household income is less than $30,000 a year.

According to a CSU equity report, students from historically underserved backgrounds often face greater obstacles and have fewer resources to ensure academic success than their overrepresented counterparts. When it comes to gender breakdown over the past eight years that I've been at SJSU, the numbers have been relatively consistent, almost 50/50. I'll point out, though, if you look around in industry, design firms don't often necessarily reflect the same gender proportion.

The current state of diversity within the field of industrial design is an undeniably dismal one, with only a mere 4% representation of Black, Indigenous, and people of color. Extensive research on diversity and inclusivity underscores the critical importance of inclusive design, particularly in accommodating diverse learners as a cornerstone for a more resilient and prosperous future.

Much like the natural world, where wider and more diverse perspectives contribute to increased resilience and success, our profession benefits greatly from a broad spectrum of voices and experiences. The pivotal starting point for achieving this diversity is access to quality education, which is why we're committed to fostering greater inclusivity and diversity in our program.

Traditional design instruction has a steep learning curve that can be a huge barrier for success for students in underrepresented minorities, where they might be working a job to take care of extended family, siblings, commuting long distances to campus, and experiencing limited access to campus resources critical to their success.

Design education starts with foundational drawing skills, and private design institutions often require a portfolio and prior design or drawing experience for acceptance to get into their programs. At SJSU, however, we instruct all students accepted into the first year. And some enter with very little or no drawing experience whatsoever. Our program gets students going from zero to talent within four years. And the success of our program is quantified by the 89% of our graduates who are finding design jobs within the first year upon graduation.

Over the years, I've found pretty consistent numbers represented across my classes. 30% are going to do well, whether you teach them or not. 10% to 20% are not going to do well, whether you teach them or not. And then there is the middle, where the biggest change can be affected.

Here, in the middle, is the potential for tools, techniques, and resources to tip the scales in favor of success. This is the point where removing barriers can make the difference between opportunity and overwhelm, and reducing the time to talent. The potential is always there in the beginning for discouragement to close the door of curiosity and passion. However, introducing computer aided design, or CAD, early in the education process has been a game changer for our program. And I'll go into it in further detail to describe the pitfalls and the triumphs.

First year foundation studies have been abstract and scaffolds to learning about the iterative design process and drawing in two-point perspective. This book by Rowena Reed Kostellow has been part of the design canon of our instruction for many years.

In the beginning, the techniques are simple because the lines are linear and the perspective construction is relatively easy to identify and plot with a ruler. Activities and themes build in complexity, moving quickly from linear lines to plotting curved lines in perspective. At this point, there's a visible stretch in student learning gaps. But it's still based on linear perspective lines, which is helpful, albeit still challenging. The last project is all organic. And this is where the fallout starts to show up even more.

At this point, the drawing-skills gap is even driving student failure, and where their construction is like origami and falling apart incrementally further with each point that's significantly off. There's little more that we can do on the instruction side, as it is typically still a matter of the proverbial 10,000 hours to build skills and simply practice.

So if learning to draw is so difficult and challenging, why do we do it? Why is drawing so important? Well, the fastest and lowest cost method of conceptualizing ideas is still drawing. This is why prolific iteration-- this is why the prolific, iterative process early is critical for successful product development outcomes.

The challenge of ramping up drawing skills quickly is a significant one that I've contemplated since my tenure first began at SJSU. As I mentioned earlier, the analogy of diversity in nature extends to our approach in design and the product development process. Just like the rich diversity found in nature, having a wide funnel of ideas offers a broad and efficient means to initially vet, explore, and generate concepts at the outset of product development.

The more limited the pool of ideas and the narrower the range of options for testing, the less thorough your exploration becomes. Therefore, if you don't begin with a substantial number of sketches, you're overlooking the most cost-effective and expedient method for exploring possibilities.

The way it looks on a timeline is here in relationship. It all starts with sketching. What becomes evident as depicted on the timeline is a relationship between the cost of change and time. This underscores the significance of fostering a broad and creative phase at the outset when the cost of change remains relatively low.

As the product advances along the timeline, alterations become increasingly costly, and at times, unfeasible. In business, these changes can significantly impact time-to-market, potentially leading to revenue loss.

Have you ever grabbed a sheet of paper, eager to capture an idea, only to realize you lack the drawing skills to do it justice? Well, in design school, we not only grapple with this challenge, but you're also graded on your attempts. This can be daunting. And, as illustrated earlier, the key to successful product development is starting with a wide enough funnel of ideas to sort, validate, and test, to arrive at a final solution.

In this framework, the fastest, least expensive, and most time-effective way to iterate is to draw. Mastering the art of drawing requires a significant investment of time to become proficient. And the enjoyment doesn't come until significant progress has been made. The problem is a steep ramp and the proverbial 10,000 hours that students don't necessarily have their first term at a liberal arts University like SJSU, where they're also taking classes in courses such as Physics and maybe even Intro to Wine Appreciation.

The onset of the pandemic presented an unprecedented challenge, as we suddenly lost access to our central shop and traditional physical instructional tools. In response, we were compelled to adapt our design instruction methods, leading to the introduction of Fusion360 in the foundational design courses for the first time.

This pivotal moment prompted us to devise innovative ways of replicating the processes that students typically engage in within the central shop, but now, in a digital, remote setting. Through Fusion360, we introduced concepts like extrusions, revolves, and lofted surfaces as alternatives to the hands-on practices involving shop tools such as the bandsaw, lathe, and router.

For instance, one foundational project required students to explore curvilinear forms by creating a visually balanced and aesthetically pleasing shape with just two 90-degree cuts on a block of wood. In Fusion360, we effectively emulated this exercise with a rectangular block form and projecting two distinct cuts onto two different planes within the software, as you see in this little video recording.

These early Fusion360 exercises progressively enhanced their skill set, culminating in a challenging project where they crafted an organic speed form, pushing their abilities to the limit by the term's end.

The limitation that showed up was when we had an "oops moment" of oversight, when the last project was not modified. And we were essentially asking first year students to create the most challenging, complex, organic surfacing models. The results reflected this stretch and skills gap that in hindsight was not a reasonable expectation in the first year of study. However, as you can see, students still did remarkably well, given the challenge.

Later, we found greater success by adjusting the assignments to more beginner-skill-level lofted surfaces of a vase, instead of the complex surfacing demands of a speed form. Students continue to expand their CAD instruction into their second and third year in our program when they learn more complex surfacing in SolidWorks.

One of the most challenging assignments this first year in our program is building scale models from cross-section drawings, either projected in 2D or from a sliced up, half-scale model. We taught ID students how to construct orthographic drawings from 2D projections of two views to extrapolate the third-- for years.

But today, by the time you have already the need for an orthographic drawing, there's usually a CAD model available. So we don't emphasize orthographic drawing by hand as much anymore. However, having cross-section templates does come in handy when you're translating a half-scale model to a full-scale model.

When students use their clay models to slice up and find the cross sections, the challenges and barriers here have to do with the fidelity of the cuts, perhaps the skills of the students to slice deformation as they are drawing, and the tolerance of the pencil gap each time they trace the cross-section. All of these steps affect the end result like origami. When the end result does not reflect what they expect to see, it can be confusing. And this is an area I was interested in problem solving further.

I received a grant and purchased a high quality 3D scanner and began experimenting with how we could translate physical to digital geometry to manipulate the software non-destructively-- to manipulate the 3D-scanned geometry non-destructively, instead of cutting up clay models. The workflow looked like this.

We used the proprietary 3D scanner software-- in this case, it's SHINING 3D-- to scan. But it was not that easy to use to clean up and mirror the model. So instead, I used Meshmixer. And this was three years ago. And at that time, our options were essentially Fusion or SolidWorks, since our students don't tend to use Blender, MeshLab or other NURBS-based software.

Fusion seemed to handle the scans' files better than SolidWorks. But back then, it didn't have a way to edit the mesh directly. Now Fusion's mesh capabilities have incorporated features from Meshmixer, and improved enough to where we can skip Meshmixer altogether and just go from scan to Fusion. Having Fusion360 and scanned mirror and mesh models meant that we could non-destructively find cross-sections with greater positions and leave the original clay models intact.

I want to share some examples of what I've been discussing so far and the benefits of what we saw with the implementation of CAD earlier in curriculum. In the spring of 2021, we were really fortunate to have a multi-campus design competition sponsored by Limar Italia and Autodesk. It was the perfect time to leverage student use of Fusion360 for these helmet designs.

We've witnessed in our design curriculum over the years, when students use CAD without having some sort of physical reference as well, they lacked an understanding of form, proportion, and scale when it was not referencing a physical model. For this reason, we use the automotive practice of sculpting with clay on 3D-printed half scale-- half heads on a mirrored surface-- for students to get some physical reference for proportion, scale, and design intent.

Just as a graphic designer never starts in software like Illustrator without a sketch first, having some tangible physical reference point is the critical path for success when it comes to early CAD adoption. This creates a tangible reference point for the CAD work they are doing digitally. In this case, you can see how time was maximized by using the technique of sculpting half the form, half scale, on a mirrored surface. This quick reference provided a grounded base of design intent, as they worked in Fusion360.

Here's another example of a successful first year student solution. These two examples are fourth year student submissions, two of the top finalists in the competition. While this organic level of work might have also been possible in SolidWorks, for students still learning how to model in CAD, Fusion made it incredibly easy to create convincingly resolved complex geometries with relative ease and high fidelity.

Here's another example of a successful fourth year student submission. The work across the different levels, first to fourth year, are really high quality. Students would have had to have had much higher skills in surface modeling to accomplish this in SolidWorks, whereas Fusion360's relative ease allowed for the success of first year models to look as convincing as fourth years.

One notable advantage of early CAD utilization lies in its potential to harness augmented reality or AR for the purpose of curbing material waste. This is achieved by evaluating models in an AR environment as an intermediary step prior to the production of 3D-printed prototypes.

We first started to use AR in the classroom during the pandemic when I taught a course on sustainability. The culmination of this course involved a self-guided, outdoor walking exhibit held at History San Jose park in San Jose, California. Faced with the challenge of limited time in a class of 18 students, I opted not to individually code each student's AR models. Instead, students created their designs using Fusion.

And I brought these designs to life in AR with third-party software tool called Vectary, which facilitated the generation of QR and web-embed codes for AR models. During this period, WIX emerged as one of the pioneering website platforms that offered a user friendly plug-in feature for integrating web embed codes, making it possible to showcase AR models effortlessly online.

Another way that we're able to generate AR models is using Adobe Dimension and Aero. It works about 60% to 70% of the time, but, again, it's still easier for designers to try this rather than trying to code themselves.

I enjoy a lot of these desserts that come in these charming little glass jars. And rather than throw them away in recycling, I'm always looking for ways to upcycle them. Shapr3D is a 3D-modeling software designed specifically for use on iPad and other Apple devices that offers a native AR-export feature, allowing effortless export.

Inspired by the notion that green onions can be extended in freshness by placing them in water like cut flowers, I decided to design a custom topper for the glass jar. Using Shapr3D, I started designing through a few revolving steps. Initially when I examined the digital prototype on the screen, it seemed acceptable. However, had I proceeded to 3D print it at this stage, it would have likely ended up in the garbage.

Instead, I projected it. And when I did, I saw a baby bottle, which was not my original design intent and was not visible when I first evaluated it on screen. The experience underscored the importance of context in design. What seemed fine as a standalone concept on the screen became less desirable when seen in a broader context.

I proceeded to sketch necessary modifications, refine the model, and projected it once more before committing to 3D printing. This iterative process took less than two hours. And projecting in AR prevented at least one piece of 3D-printed waste from ending up in landfill.

While some might argue that PLA is a sustainable bioplastic, it's actually only recyclable under very specific conditions. And the recycling process itself generates significant CO2 emissions and requires high temperatures. Therefore, any reduction in the use of PLA in 3D printing is a positive step towards a more sustainable future.

This is an example of how a student was able to take their clay model to orient the form to the hand and physical reality, and then translate the model into Fusion, project it as AR to further evaluate the form, sketch on top of the AR screenshots, and modify further, before 3D printing it for final evaluation. With quick, no-code solutions for evaluating CAD models in AR, it's getting easier to reduce environmental impact by leveraging AR whenever possible before 3D printing.

I teach a course in the second year of undergraduate design called Materials and Manufacturing Processes. Students in this class learn about the 10 major, most common manufacturing methods used in the industrial design process. In the past, students were required to draw these processes to describe them. But since my students now had a year of Fusion experience, I tested a pilot workshop in VR to gamify interaction with these manufacturing processes instead.

The barrier to running this workshop was immediately apparent. Only three students had graphics processors and laptops new enough to run Unity for VR. Only two students had VR headsets to use at home to continue work outside of class. And only one student had prior experience using VR at all. These statistics made progress slow and challenging.

We divided the class into teams of three around the three computers available. In addition to hardware challenges, VR instruction feels more like problem solving in IT work, as it's still in the Wild West phase, and best practices are not clear yet and outlined.

At the end of the day, the computers and gear were a barrier to more success in the workshop. Regardless, though, the outcomes could eventually be expanded to use in a classroom instructional setting, prior to using machines such as laser cutters or going on factory tours. The idea for the laser cutter, for example, is to gamify instruction of what materials can safely be cut and which ones cannot.

While designers might not typically use topology optimization in their workflows, from a sustainability perspective, we can no longer afford to ignore and to design without some form of idea of sustainability in mind. Topology optimization provides real-time visualization of material strengths and weaknesses of a given CAD model that represents a product. It allows for the optimization of strength-to-weight as a goal.

In my classes, we use topology optimization as an introduction to generative design, which has even greater potential as to sustainable practice, which I'll go into later.

We try to connect the dots connect the dots in design education to other aspects of product development that they might encounter or might be interested in exploring further. Gaby Waldman-Fried and Tim Paul introduced topology optimization in my Advanced Materials class by breaking down the operative elements of finite element analysis and topology optimization on mesh structures and vertices.

While as designers we won't necessarily be involved on the SEA side, understanding the forces at work through our CAD software provides designers a more empowered seat at the round table when it comes to product development. 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.

It's my hope, though, that as we continue to layer in new engineering concepts in industrial design education, the connection between the load-bearing vertices and polygon geometry will help designers develop products with longer life spans and using less raw materials, which ultimately leads to less part failures, decreased part costs, and more sustainable practices.

Early adoption of Fusion360 in our curriculum meant that I could introduce advanced sustainability practices, such as using generative design in the third and the fourth year of undergraduate studies. Generative design is useful tool for engineers and designers alike when it comes to rapid iteration early in the product development cycle.

If you'll remember, rapid and prolific ideas early in the product development cycle are critical to successful, viable outcomes. With traditional practice, we're limited by our ability to draw and iterate by hand. Generative design leverages the power of AI to take a given set of constraints, obstacles, and functional parameters and rapidly offer multiple viable solutions using various materials and manufacturing processes simultaneously in the cloud.

For an engineer to explore this many ideas would take an incredible amount of time. So leveraging this tool as a designer can be a powerful way to explore sustainable design practice. Here are some examples of how students were able to use generative design in their product outcomes.

In conclusion, introducing Fusion360 in the first year of undergraduate design curriculum has been an essential tool to reduce time-to-talent and open the door of advancing design students skills in other emerging technologies.

Here are some things we learned along the way. Early CAD use levels the playing field by providing access to powerful visualization tools at home and removing the barrier of access to critical campus resources. Early CAD use, when also accompanied by physical reference models, can help students visualize their ideas quickly. Early CAD means they can expand their skills in subsequent years with greater ease into generative design, AR, and VR to become more competitive candidates for hire upon graduation.

We still, however, don't have a solution for the issue of student overwhelm in the beginning phases of learning new software and the challenge of cultivating a growth mindset. But I think it might have something to do with structuring learning in the future with lower stakes activities that build in complexity to take the pressure off of learning and integrating both at the same time in graded activities.

We're looking forward to exploring new features since I last taught the foundation class, such as automated modeling and the pattern feature in Fusion. We had an opportunity to compete in a multi-campus design competition sponsored by Camelbak and Autodesk. And as you can see, the quality of output in this first-year students' work is remarkably high and the enjoyment factor for students tipped the scales to keep pressing on in the program.

Where students were struggling with motivation and deflated by critiques as they slogged through the trenches of drawing and rendering, there appears to be a distinct sense of fulfillment when their work exists within the realm of software. This shift seems to provide a degree of detachment from the personal as they are learning and perhaps uncertain about their level of success.

Here are more examples of first-year work that I consider a huge win, not just because of the high quality outcome but because of the resulting internal fulfillment and motivation that hopefully keeps propelling students forward in their studies. Research suggests that motivation can result in student satisfaction and subsequently develop higher skills and competencies.

As designers, we need positive motivation to keep going. Otherwise, it's easy to get burnt out. Students learning how to draw and building new skills in industrial design are particularly susceptible to burnout and discouragement through limitation in ability that takes time to build. Early use of CAD, the ability to visualize ideas quickly leading to motivation and satisfaction, can perhaps build muscle memory to reduce time-to-talent where traditional skills are still being developed.

The convincingness of their renders and geometry can help, as long as it's accompanied by physical models and drawing and sketching by hand as well. As students were able to improve their CAD skills, they could quickly move on to focus on other aspects as well, such as their graphic design and layout skills. In these posters, they would pull together all the elements of design they learned throughout the term to communicate their ideas.

While it's still a challenge to keep pushing students to draw and to stay prolific in the ideation sketching phase, Fusion360 has been instrumental in removing the barrier to at least get to the design playing field and capturing greater success, motivation, and outcomes in our foundational student work. Thank you for your time.