Why EDI?
The Engineering Design and Innovation Program is intended for the recent engineering graduate who plans to practice engineering in a product development role. EDI is designed to help that person flourish in today’s team-based, innovation-driven work environment by teaching them to collaborate effectively with designers, social scientists, and managers.
The design of successful products and services requires skills that cut across disciplines. Design has become increasingly important in today’s world of decentralized and outsourced design, manufacturing, and distribution.
Designers, however, work differently than engineers do, using tools that are qualitative, observational, and artistic. These approaches may not mesh well with the more formal, quantitative analyses and methods of engineers. EDI bridges this gap. It introduces engineers to “design thinking,” the qualitative approach used by designers, for whom discovering the real need and going through multiple iterative cycles of design, building, and testing are essential.
EDI focuses upon five components of design: the engineering infrastructure, the methods used in design research, idea creation, design iteration, and, especially, the human side of products and services. Products and services are designed for people. Without a full understanding of the needs and activities of people, the best engineering efforts will fail. The hallmark of the EDI program is the human-centered approach to engineering design.
