Drawing for Product Design. A training framework in drawing for university students

Drawing is the first instrumental subject taught at the Bachelor of Science in Industrial Design at School of Design all over the world. The teaching of design is particularly critical in the training of the Italian students for the high number of students per class. During this Studio, for the first time, students learn how to shape their ideas with their hands, trying to use them without thinking about it, but only thinking about the subject matter of the representation: their project. Particularly, this paper describes the results of a PhD thesis [1] of Politecnico di Milano named “The drawing for product design: teaching tools for working world”. Therefore, this research aims to investigate the relationship between design and drawing, or, more in general, between design and representation. There are several analogies between these two disciplines: the most important one is the multidisciplinary nature that leads them to have a relationship with several disciplines belonging to art, science, technique and technology. Specially, the relationship between design and other disciplines is supported by several uses of drawing techniques. Indeed, drawing has a central role in the process “shape – shape perception - transmission of shape perception”. For this reason, drawing is highly involved in the design process “idea – idea formulation – idea realisation”. The relationship between drawing and design has a central role in the didactic of the design discipline also. Indeed, drawing and design are the two most important disciplines in the didactic offer of design courses because the ability of designers to represent something is essential to communicate both to himself and to the other people what has to be done and in which way. Through a bibliographic research focused on the design didactic, it has been highlighted that constructivist approach in design teaching is fundamental because it allows students to build experience and to learn from this experience. In addition, it has been highlighted that the practice has great relevance not only being an application of theoretical principles, but also by itself , in “doingdisciplines”. It is important to connect the “knowledge” with the “knowledge – how”. In conclusion, guidelines and exercises are edited trough the analysis of: • the role of representation didactic inside historical school of design, • the role of representation didactic inside today design training in Italian university degree courses, • the role of representation throughout all the design process, in regard to the basic competences that students must have after the Bachelor of Arts in design, to deal with the business world or with the Master of Arts