81906 - Industrial Design 6

Learning outcomes

The module is designed to provide students with the necessary tools to manage and develop complex representations that are instrumental in ensuring the producibility and industrial feasibility of a product. Through the course, students will acquire the ability to approach design processes by effectively leveraging the potential of automated representation systems, and to communicate their design decisions with clarity and precision through appropriate visual means.

Course contents

Goods logistics is today a pervasive and largely invisible infrastructure: it governs the planet's material flows, sustains global consumption patterns, and shapes the rhythm of cities and territories, while remaining largely unnoticed in everyday experience.

The first two decades of the new millennium have made the urgency of transformation evident. The growth of e-commerce, the pressure on urban last-mile delivery, the resource consumption of packaging, and new expectations around speed, traceability and sustainability are reshaping the system starting from its designable elements: vehicles, handling systems, packaging.

Within this scenario, the human component remains the most vulnerable element of the system: operational error in driving, in manual handling and in managing load-breaking points is often amplified by fatigue and by products or interfaces that fail to adequately support the operator's needs.

On the environmental level too, critical issues stem from precise design choices: oversized single-use packaging, energy-inefficient vehicles and handling systems. These are decisions that concern directly those who design the product, not only those who manage the process.

At the same time, logistics is no longer an invisible function but a lever of competitiveness: companies increasingly ask designers to intervene on vehicles, handling systems and packaging as components of a single product-system, integrating sensors, connectivity and real-time data from the concept phase onward.

In light of these transformations, the studio proposes to work on the relational componentry of the logistics system: the set of products (vehicle, handling system, packaging) whose reciprocal relationship, together with their individual optimization, determines the real quality of the supply chain.

Course structure

The three instructors bring together three areas of expertise that converge on a single design object observed at three scales: the vehicle, the handling system, the packaging.

Students, divided into groups, will primarily be supervised by one assigned instructor, with a project focused on one of the three scales. During the course, however, they will have the opportunity to receive reviews from the other instructors in order to produce a design outcome that is coherent across all three dimensions of intervention and effective at the systemic level.

At the end of each phase, progress will be shared simultaneously with all three instructors: each group will need to develop its own project while taking into account the constraints and opportunities of the other two scales, in order to reflect the systemic complexity of the theme.

Content covered in Prof. Flaviano Celaschi's module

Handling of goods during load-breaking phases

The module integrates two areas:

• design-driven innovation methodologies (Advanced Design, User Studies, Design Thinking, Codesign, anticipation and futures sciences applied to design);
• systemic analysis of products and handling systems during load-breaking phases, designed in coherence with the transport vehicles and the packaging of the goods being handled;
• advanced design-driven engineering: case studies and critical issues.

  Content covered in Prof. Leonardo Frizziero's module

  Vehicles for freight transport

  The module applies Industrial Engineering Methodologies to the design of freight transport vehicles, taking into account automatic and manual handling and the nature of the packaging to be transported. In particular:

• IDeS – Industrial Design Structure, for organizing an industrial project
• DFSS – Design For Six Sigma, for the systematic implementation of project phases
• SDE – Stylistic Design Engineering, for style-oriented design
• QFD – Quality Function Deployment, oriented toward market analysis
• Benchmarking, oriented toward competitor analysis
• Top-Flop Analysis, to define innovation objectives

These activities will take place within projects simulating the development of a product in a corporate setting.

Content covered in Prof. Roberto Polloni's module

Packaging

The module addresses the design of primary and secondary packaging producible on an industrial scale, consistent with the constraints imposed by transport vehicles and handling systems.

Automation of handling, digital traceability and material sustainability are redefining packaging in its dual function: protecting the product and serving as an interface with transport and storage systems.

The activity involves the study of materials and industrially scalable production processes, identification and tracking technologies (smart labelling, RFID, etc.), and design-for-manufacturing principles applied to packaging, with a prototyping and technical validation phase. Classroom work will be supported by case studies and testimonials.

Readings/Bibliography

• Celaschi, F., Non Industrial Design, Luca Sossella editore, Milano 2017

• Casoni, G., Celaschi, F., Human Body design, Franco Angeli, Milano 2020

• Norman, D., Il Design del futuro, Apogeo, Milano 2008

• Frizziero, L. et al., Developing innovative crutch using IDeS (industrial design structure)

  methodology, Applied Sciences (Switzerland), Vol. 9, Iss. 23, 1 December 2019, nr. 5032

• Frizziero, L., Liverani, A., Nannini, L., Design for six sigma (DFSS) applied to a new eco-

  motorbike, Machines, Volume 7, Issue 3, 2019, nr. 52 

Further timely references will be given by the lecturer during the lectures in the first block.
Projects carried out in past years are available on the Mobility Contemporary System website

Teaching methods

The course is organized in 3 phases:

• PHASE 1 – Study: seminar (lectures and seminars with guests, in person or online)
• PHASE 2 – Design research: analysis and concept development (groups explore, through fieldwork and desk research, the topics agreed upon with the instructors)
• PHASE 3 – Development, testing and feasibility: design and prototype (analysis is synthesized and given form, focusing on the solution)

At the end of each phase, students are required to produce a summary output in slideshow form, presented to all other students and evaluated as an intermediate progress assessment for each group.

Teaching activities will be enriched, during the first phase of the course, by contributions from industry experts.

Assessment methods

The exam, held orally with a slideshow and prototype presentation, evaluates the final project outcome, weighed together with the instructors' collegial assessment of the intermediate analysis phase and of students' active participation throughout all phases of the course.

Use of generative Artificial Intelligence

With regard to the assessment of learning, a limited, declared and non-substantial use of generative Artificial Intelligence is permitted for support activities such as summarizing, rewording, and preliminary organization of materials.

Substantial use of AI to replace the design, critical, argumentative, representational or production work required of students is not permitted. Any use of AI tools must be declared and documented in the submitted materials, specifying which tools were used, for which activities, and with what role in the design process.

Teaching tools

- Lectures with slide-show projection

- Testimonials and talks by guest experts on the topic

- Collective and individual reviews

- VIRTUAL: faculty-student communications; uploading teaching materials; delivery student materials; forums with students/community

-MIRO: for brainstorming and other forms of shared planning

Office hours

See the website of Flaviano Celaschi

See the website of Roberto Polloni