MID 2010 Gareth Roberts

Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering, Bachelor of Design (Industrial Design) - Monash University, Australia 2006

Website: www.gareth-roberts.com Design as a Discipline is evolving from a product-oriented trade to a discipline fostering creative thinkers adept at instigating change across a range of industries. I am a Master of Industrial Design student at the University of the Arts; a program where we embrace this new model of design and actively explore how designers can be a catalyst for innovation. I began my college education studying both Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Design, and was immediately struck by a paradox; the two disciplines are truly part of one complete whole, yet they approach common tasks from polar perspectives. Engineers are problem solvers, they reduce a problem to it’s most granular components and solve each in the most efficient way. Designers are problem solvers too, yet they are creative thinkers and deal with the big picture outcome without truly understanding how that can be achieved. Collaboration between the two is paramount for the success of a given project, yet the two streams rarely see eye-to-eye. At UArts, I am developing a diverse set of skills that give me a unique perspective to bridge the gap between the Engineering and Design disciplines and thus the ability to help streamline the design proces

Articles

MID Students collaborate with the Aalto University in Finland

Mon, 04/26/2010 - 9:46am

Between Monday 15th and Saturday 20th of March, MID Director Jonas Milder and second-year Masters student Gareth Roberts had the privilege of visiting three campuses of the Aalto University in Finland. The purpose for this visit was to connect...

I’ve always loved design. From the moment I could put pen to paper, I was always sketching cars. And while product design is still a strong design passion of mine, I have now augmented that with an interest in systems design at UArts. In a perfect world, I’ll be able to help you with both.

Projects

Although distance education is not a new concept, the field has struggled for decades to gain credibility in academic circles. Drawing from a thorough investigation of current distance education systems and protocols, this project aims to explore the current untapped potential of on-line education, and develop several design elements to improve the efficiency of distance knowledge transfer.

Distance Knowledge Transfer »

StudioNEXT 2009 »

A novel option worth considering is to bring in a team of designers to facilitate a quantitative and qualitative introspective collaboration with your company. Collaboration is key to this process. It helps promote staff investment in design suggestions and ideas, since they directly helped create them. We have tested this method of collaborative design with a metal fabrication company based in North Philadelphia. As always, our process began with interviewing staff members about their life at work.

Co-designing Business »