Research programmes

Six comprehensive research programmes have been defined for Industrial Design Engineering. Three of these programmes , Strategic Design, User Experience, and Technology Transformation, provide foundational multidisciplinary knowledge for the discipline of industrial design. These three programmes are hierarchically connected in that they cover the three defining stages of a design process: the strategic/context level, the human-product interaction level, and the product level, respectively.The programmes are furthermore directly linked to the three departments within IDE, Product and Innovation Management (PIM), Industrial Design (ID) and Design Engineering (DE), respectively.

Applied programmes

It is also important for the future of industrial design that operative knowledge is generated. The research portfolio secures this generation of operative knowledge in three applied programmes in which foundational knowledge is applied in solutions for specific application areas. These areas are: Healthcare, Personal Mobility, and Living/Working. Such operative based research and knowledge development in turn generates many issues and questions that require and feed foundational research in the three foundational programmes.

Sustainable well-being

It must be emphasised that all six programmes share the objective of ‘sustainable well-being’ as the primary driving force for research topic and question formulation. In each programme, research projects of various types and sizes will be carried out. Whereas projects in the foundational programmes can be, but do not need to be, programme-specific, projects in the applied programmes always carry a strong link to one or more foundational programmes to secure their primary knowledge-driven objective (instead of being mere design projects).