Design is a very competitive marketplace; finding a foothold and competing successfully requires a unique blend of personal creativity, sustained focus and application, as well as knowledge of current material and manufacturing techniques, and know how of marketng & communication. Entering this new step of your professional lives, the precise design context awaiting each of you will almost certainly involve you harnessing the proactive attitudes, skills and methodologies you have been learning to create attractive and competitive products and services.

The Innovation Studio aims at stimulating the entrepreneurial attitude in each student, and at providing an experience that is as close as possible to the real design profession of today. To do this, it pushes students to stretching their design knowledge and skills, while engaging them with real clients to prove the talent they have been developing as post-graduates.

THE SUBJECT

We are working on the subject of "Heath&wealth": how to improve the lives of people and prevent major social diseases in Western societies.

We will explore unconventional answers, based on the change of lifestyle rather than on drug treatment, following the principle that to take care of people is the work of doctors, to improve their lifestyle is the mission of designers.

Hypokinetism, and lack of motivation are the enemies. Students' answers will be products and services that guide and support people, in an epochal change of lifestyle that our society still needs to do.

EDUCATIONAL AIMS and OUTCOMES

Aims

As real, fully detailed, pre-production prototypes are the Innovation studio's outcomes, this studio will propel you through the vital experiences that link "problems" to "innovative solutions"

The studio additionally aims to develop and establish a secure design process through exploration of these innovation skills: it calibrates your individual strengths and value systems, using the new freedoms centred around contemporary manufacture and engaging your management skills to develop intelligent team-based entrepreneurial products for public exhibition at the conclusion of the studio.

Outcomes

On completing the studio each student is expected to be able to:

• Research on contexts of use and verify the potential customer's demand
• Work within open-ended frameworks, requiring self-reliance and risk-evaluation. 
• Have a robustly iterative design development process that integrates , analysis and deployment of team skills, concept exploration, experimentation, advanced manufacture, communication and presentation
• Understand the opportunities, principles and practice of new manufacturing technologies and the disciplines of designing for them
• Assume responsibility for self-directed learning, time management, work rate, management of team skills and achievement of learning outcomes.

The project review regime operates in two distinct ways: individual students and team design process are monitored throughout the project. This is supported by team-centred regular tutorial progress tutorials. The studio staff also record and comment on individuals’ ‘soft’ skills and application to the studio and its challenges.

There will be 3 steps of evaluation during the semester 1-the research phase 2- the prototyping phase-3-marketing&communication plus a final evaluation  

Each day of class is run as a workshop, thus all students are required to work in class and develop their work through the tutorials of the teaching team.

The presence is compulsory, and is recorded by the teaching team so to add up to the required 70% of presence to the full studio.