TRANSITIONING FROM FORM AND COLOR TO SENSORY ASPECTS OF DESIGN

Lois Frankel
School of Industrial Design, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

In North American undergraduate industrial design programs the curriculum frequently includes a foundation studio course introducing students to the fundamentals of form and color.  This paper reports on a recent curriculum change from such a traditional Bauhaus-influenced design studio to a lecture-based course exploring aspects of multi-sensory design for product designers.  The new format extends the accepted rules about form and color phenomena into a more wide-ranging study of multi-sensory product qualities. This paper presents the learning objectives, outcomes, and examples from this approach to expanding product design students’ awareness of a range of visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory, and other related design qualities.