Interdisciplinarity is a key to enhance the product development process - How students deal with it and how they envolve with it

lnterdisciplinary work is gaining attention not only in the academic landscape. Even at University where many different disciplines coexist in a minimum amount of space, the interdisciplinary work was used too seldom in tbe past. In order to teach the graduates tbe required competences regarding teamwork and project wode, but also to fulfil interdisciplinarity needs, the collahorative Advaoced Design Project (cADP) was integrated into the curriculum at Technische Universität Darmstadt. The cADP is based on a mandatory group work for mechanical engineering students, where engineering problems must be solved together accordiog to the principle of minimal help. The focus of tms mandatory project is not only on the problem solving process, but also in training and reflection of group processes. This project has been extended in such a way, that interdisciplinary teams of students of mechanical engineering witb a focus on product development, ergonomics and computer aided techniques work on a product development project task together with students of psycbology and industrial design. This new form ofinterdisciplinary team work ofstudents was called cADP. Tbe cADP focuses on the early stages of the computer aided development of ergonomic- and designoriented products from the very flrst idea to building a virtual prototype up to a design and functional prototype and evaluating this ODe. Products should be designed using discipline typical methods, but with the use of synergy etfects of tbe interdisciplinary team. In the following the experiences of students in tbe cADP project will be described; what are the main challenges of working together with other disciplines and bow can there fouod a way to deal with it. For this purpose student questionnaires were analyzed. Furthermore it will be sbown how the quality of the products increases tbrough interdisciplinary cooperation. For this purpose classic group work results are compared with tbe results of cADP groups