Engaging in Product Development as Means to Understand the Basics of Design

Teaching product design is not a trivisal task. Considering the experience done along 20 years of teaching at master level class in mechanical engineering it is possible to take stock. The model followed is Project-Based Learning and this method can be licensed as the model that gives greater satisfaction to all attendees. Students give high score to the survey organized by university at the end of the course to assess didactic validity. Also, teachers have many stimuli when discussing with students the activities proposed. The course is based on the development of an industrial product that solves a problem, eventually posed by industry or emerged by customers. Based on the course schedule, the different phases of product development put in evidence the steps that require divergent thinking and those where it is necessary to employ convergent thinking. A case study allows explaining all the phases of product design.