Product Design
DFM, Materials, CAD, Prototyping, Sustainability
Foundations of Product Design
Where form, function, and manufacturing meet.
Design for Manufacturing (DFM)
The discipline of designing what can actually be made.
Materials & Processes for Product Designers
What a product is made of shapes everything else about it.
Product Semantics & Form Language
Objects communicate before anyone reads the manual.
Sketching & Ideation for Product Design
Thinking with a pen, faster than any software allows.
3D Modelling for Product Design (CAD)
Turning a sketch into a buildable, testable file.
Rapid Prototyping & Model Making
Making an idea real enough to test.
Sustainable & Circular Product Design
Designing for the product's whole life, not just its first use.
User-Centered Product Design
Designing the physical object around how people actually use it.
Product Design Case Studies & Capstone
Bringing the whole specialization together on one real brief.
About the Product Design silo
Product Design is the practice of shaping physical objects for manufacture and use. The silo covers fundamentals, design for manufacturing, materials and processes, product semantics, sketching, CAD, rapid prototyping, sustainability, user-centred design and a capstone.
A product designer must resolve form, function and manufacturability together. The courses follow the order of a project, from early sketching to production-ready documentation, and show where manufacturing constraints should enter the process. Sustainability is treated as a design requirement across the lifecycle, not an add-on.
Suggested learning path
- Foundations of Product Design. Product design shapes physical objects for manufacture and use at scale. Covers form, function & manufacture: the three-way tension, product design vs. adjacent disciplines, the product design process overview and more.
- Design for Manufacturing (DFM). Design for Manufacturing ensures a product can be produced reliably, affordably, and at the intended volume. Covers why dfm comes before tooling, not after, injection molding design rules, tolerance stacking and more.
- Materials & Processes for Product Designers. Material choice constrains form, cost, durability, and manufacturing process simultaneously. Covers material families overview, selecting for mechanical & thermal requirements, material choice constrains process choice and more.
- Product Semantics & Form Language. A product's form communicates how to use it, what it's made of, and what brand it belongs to, before a single word of instruction is read. Covers form communicates before instructions do, affordance in physical form, form language across a product family and more.
- Sketching & Ideation for Product Design. Sketching remains the fastest way to explore product form before committing to digital modelling. Covers sketching as thinking, not just recording, quick-ideation sketching techniques, perspective & form construction for products and more.
- 3D Modelling for Product Design (CAD). CAD modelling converts a product concept into a precise, manufacturable digital form. Covers parametric modelling fundamentals for product design, surfacing for organic product forms, specifying tolerances in cad and more.
- Rapid Prototyping & Model Making. Rapid prototyping converts a digital or sketched concept into a physical object that can be held, tested, and evaluated. Covers matching prototype to question, foam & card modelling, 3d printing in the prototyping workflow and more.
- Sustainable & Circular Product Design. Sustainable product design accounts for a product's full lifecycle, material sourcing, use-phase impact, and end-of-life disassembly or recycling. Covers lifecycle thinking, design for disassembly, embodied impact of materials & processes and more.
- User-Centered Product Design. User-centered product design applies research and usability methods, more commonly associated with digital UX, to physical objects. Covers why physical products need user research too, observing real product use, testing physical prototypes with users and more.
- Product Design Case Studies & Capstone. This capstone course studies real product design case histories in depth and applies every prior course in the Product Design specialization, form, materials, DFM, prototyping, sustainability, user research, to a single, complete design brief carried from concept to production-ready documentation. Covers reading a product design case history, defining the capstone brief, integrating form, material & dfm decisions and more.
What you will be able to do
- Resolve form, function and manufacture together
- Apply design for manufacturing rules
- Build and test physical prototypes
- Document a design for production
How to study this
Read Foundations of Product Design, then Materials and Processes. Pair every course with a small prototype and finish with the capstone brief.
Who it is for
Industrial design students, engineers moving toward design, and entrepreneurs developing physical products.
Frequently asked questions
- Is CAD software taught?
- The CAD course covers parametric modelling concepts using common tools, but the focus is on workflow rather than button-clicking.
- Does it include sustainability?
- Yes. A full course covers lifecycle thinking, disassembly and avoiding greenwashing.
- Can I do the capstone alone?
- Yes. The capstone is a self-directed brief that can be done individually or in a small team.