Breaking Down Barriers to Undergraduate Design Students' Creativity and their Understanding of Product Meaning

This paper aims to encourage educators to approach design projects using a variety of methods. Design activities are described which should appeal to students of all ages, skills and backgrounds. The paper describes curriculum development of the industrial design and technology undergraduate programmes at Loughborough University, UK. Product design project work to introduce undergraduate students to the subject of product semantics is discussed. The design project described provides a novel pedagogical approach to introduce students to the subject of visual meaning in products. Product semantics is that area of design knowledge concerned with the visual meaning or language of products; meaning which designers attempt to imbue and users perceive primarily from the visual appearance or look of a product.Successful, integrat