industrial desgin Archives

A Q&A with Hong Kim, Designer of Frame Runners for the 2028 Paralympics

Spotlight articles shine a light on designers, engineers and researchers we admire, asking leaders in the field about their work and their creative journey. This month, our theme is Inclusivity in Design, and we are looking at how products, systems and experiences can expand who gets to participate, and on whose terms.

Hong Kim, Frame Runner Designer for the 2028 LA Paralympics

Frame Running will make its Paralympic debut as a medal event at the 2028 Los Angeles Games, marking a major milestone for a sport that has transformed access to running for people with cerebral palsy. Originally developed in Denmark in 1991 as “RaceRunning,” the three-wheeled running frame quickly spread throughout Northern Europe through CPISRA. In 2019, World Para Athletics officially recognized it as a track discipline, assigning sport classes T71 and T72 and later renaming it Frame Running. In 2023, the rehabilitation organization Good Playground introduced the sport to South Korea by designing and distributing domestically produced running frames, helping train a new generation of athletes for the road to LA.

To explore this space, we spoke with Hong Kim, a New York based multidisciplinary designer and 3D specialist who now leads Frame Runner development for Good Playground. Drawing on years of serious cycling, architectural visualization and medical simulation, Hong approaches the Frame Runner not as a medical aid but as a high performance sports machine and a tool for freedom, dignity and joy.

In this conversation, we discuss engineering for extreme forces, the realities of co-designing with athletes and clinicians, and how elite sports can reshape everyday mobility design for children and seniors.

CAD rendering of a Frame Runner design shown from the side and front, illustrating how an athlete's body positions within the three-wheeled frame, with a chest support, handlebars, and two rear wheels. — A CAD rendering of Hong Kim’s Frame Runner design, showing the athlete’s positioning within the frame from the side and front.

Q:

Can you tell us a little about your journey and how you came to work with the Korean Paralympic team for the 2028 Games?

A:

I am a New York based multidisciplinary designer and 3D specialist. After graduating from Parsons with an MFA, I worked across many different fields, including medical simulation, LEGO game development, 3D fabrication and architectural lighting simulation.

Outside of work, I have been a long time rider and leader with the New York Cycling Club. That experience gave me a very deep, hands-on understanding of how bicycles work, including mechanics, geometry and engineering across different riding styles.

Those two tracks came together in RH1, a carbon scooter concept I developed with an architect colleague. We approached it with total production rigor, and the combination of high-fidelity visualization and 3D-printed prototypes proved that engineering-backed design can bridge the gap between concept and reality.

Eventually, all of this connected. My diverse design background, together with my cycling knowledge, matched what Good Playground needed. That is how I became the design and project lead for a custom Frame Runner program ahead of the 2028 Paralympics, working for a broader international market rather than the Korean team alone.

Q:

A competition mobility device becomes an extension of the athlete’s body. How does that shape your approach to design?

A:

There’s not much existing reference for this kind of device, so a lot of what I do, I have to invent. My starting point is always stability. That’s why I lean on triangular structures, they give the most confidence for a rider to actually push their physical limits. If they don’t feel safe, they won’t try.

From there, I bring in aerodynamics and performance, but always on top of that stable base. I don’t design it as medical equipment. I’m designing a sports machine, something an athlete is proud to use, visually and emotionally.

Q:

Every athlete moves differently. What are the biggest biomechanical differences you consider when designing a Frame Runner?

A:

Sizing, small, medium, large, is just the starting point. The real complexity is in how each athlete transfers energy into the machine. Some push almost entirely through the chest support; others generate strong lateral force through rapid arm strokes. I was genuinely surprised watching some athletes push hard enough that the metal connection between the frame and body actually tore.

So the real challenge isn’t just making parts adjustable, it’s making sure every joint and connection point where force concentrates can survive that load, so 100% of the athlete’s effort transfers directly into forward motion instead of getting lost in flex or wobble.

Pull quote from Hong Kim reading, your strongest tools are your ideas and your curiosity.

Q:

Can you share a moment when working with an athlete completely changed the way you thought about design?

Three athletes competing in Frame Running on a track, each pushing a three-wheeled frame with helmets on, racing side by side. — Athletes competing in Frame Running.

A:

Watching that chest support tear under real force was one. Another was an athlete whose leg kept rubbing against the frame during training, something no CAD model would ever show you. Those issues only appear when a real person, with a specific body and movement pattern, uses the device.

Working with a company founded by a physician was critical here, I had direct access to feedback from doctors and physical therapists, and could translate that immediately into structural changes. It taught me that this work isn’t about a beautiful static rendering. It’s about managing force, friction and human limits in their most extreme form, and that’s genuinely humbling.

Q:

How much of a competition Frame Runner is customized for each athlete, and what stays standardized?

A:

We use a hybrid model, custom frame geometry combined with standardized bicycle components. The main frame is tailored to the athlete’s height and proportions, built around small, medium and large, with extra-small or extra-large available when needed.

For everything else, we rely on off-the-shelf bike parts wherever possible, handlebars, stems, saddles, seatposts, and wheels in 650c or 700c sizes, along with specific wheel-tilt angles for stability. That keeps things serviceable using familiar bicycle infrastructure, rather than requiring a lab or factory every time something needs adjusting.

Pull quote from Hong Kim reading, mobility design isn't just about mechanical speed, it's about freedom, dignity and identity.

Q:

How would you describe Good Playground‘s overall design philosophy for the Frame Runner program?

A:

Good Playground’s logo integration and graphic concept

It comes down to two things: engineering simplicity and total visual branding. On the engineering side, we’re minimizing part counts and optimizing structure for real manufacturing, true 3D engineering grounded in structural reality, not surface styling. On the design side, we’re building one unified visual language across every touchpoint, frame geometry, uniforms, footwear, helmets…so the whole program reads as a single high-performance sports identity, even within a tight budget.

Before scaling up, we field-tested 100 first-generation stainless steel units with young athletes, so these decisions came from real feedback, not assumptions.

Q:

Has designing competition mobility devices changed the way you think about products for everyone, not just athletes?

A:

Definitely. My long-term interest is everyday life, seniors, children, anyone who needs mobility support. I want to shift medical devices away from a cold, clinical aesthetic into something closer to lifestyle or sports gear. The emotional experience matters as much as the mechanical one.

Looking ahead, I hope to initiate projects like a “My First Wheelchair” concept, a lightweight indoor wheelchair designed for young children encountering mobility devices for the first time. My goal is for it to feel more like playing with building blocks than sitting in hospital furniture. If a child feels curious and proud instead of sick, that changes everything. High-performance sports projects serve as our testing laboratory, and what we learn there will eventually shape warmer, more inclusive everyday products.

Q:
You’re also an avid cyclist. How has that shaped the way you think about design, ergonomics and performance?

A:

Photorealistic rendering of the Frame Runner in orange and blue, showing the triangular frame, chest support, handlebars, and three carbon wheels. — A rendering of the Frame Runner design, currently a work in progress.

If I weren’t a cyclist, I don’t think I could design this product well. Personal experience is everything with rideable devices, no matter how beautiful something looks, nobody uses it if it’s uncomfortable. I ride many different machines, folding bikes, gravel bikes, road bikes, mountain bikes, and a Frame Runner is just another member of that family to me.

Cycling also taught me how small changes matter: a two-millimeter adjustment can completely change how your body feels after hours of riding. That’s shaped how I think about ergonomics as something dynamic, not fixed, early in a season, athletes need a more upright, comfortable position; as they train, they naturally settle into a lower, more aerodynamic one. The equipment has to be able to follow that evolution. I call it biogeometry, designing for how the body and machine change together over time, not for one static moment.

Q:

Looking ahead, what do you think is the next big opportunity in mobility design, and what advice would you give designers who want to work in this space?

A:

The biggest opportunity is shifting focus from transportation to quality of life. People with physical limitations don’t want gear that makes them look fragile in public, there’s a huge, underdeveloped space for mobility tools people are genuinely proud to use, closer to personal style than medical equipment. Mobility design isn’t just about mechanical speed, it’s about designing freedom, dignity and identity. Any product that raises someone’s daily quality of life while breaking that stigma has the potential to lead this field.

My advice to other designers: don’t overthink it, and don’t be afraid to start. You don’t need to be an expert in everything, let doctors handle medicine, engineers handle calculations, fabricators handle the builds. Your strongest tools are your ideas and your curiosity. Stay genuinely interested in how people actually move and live, and the technical problems become challenges you want to solve, not obstacles.

Three images showing the RH1 carbon scooter concept: a finished render, a photo of a physical prototype being handled, and hand-drawn technical sketches with measurements. — Hong Kim’s RH1 carbon scooter concept, from rendering to clay prototype and sketches.

–

Our conversation with Hong left us with a clear takeaway: inclusive design isn’t about compensating for limitation, it’s about engineering trust. What stayed with us most was where he wants to take this next, beyond elite sport, toward everyday mobility devices that give children and seniors the same freedom and pride he’s building for Paralympic athletes.

At Interwoven Design Group, collaborations like this are a huge part of what makes our work so meaningful. Many of the projects we work on exist at the intersection of design, engineering, material science, healthcare, and emerging technology. Working alongside experts like Candace not only pushes the work further technically, but also expands how we think about problem solving, comfort, usability, and the future of wearable systems. It’s this cross-disciplinary exchange that continues to make the field of smart textiles such an exciting space to work in.

Check out the rest of our Spotlight series to hear more from leaders in the design industry. Sign up for our newsletter and follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn for design news, multi-media recommendations, and to learn more about product design and development!

Breakthroughs by Design: How Women Lead Transformative Processes

This article, written by Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman, was published in the Spring 2025 Issue of IDSA’s INNOVATION Magazine.

When we talk about design breakthroughs, we often picture the end result: a futuristic object, a viral prototype, a sleek product that redefines its category. But equally powerful — and less celebrated — are the breakthroughs happening behind the scenes. These are the moments when designers shift the process itself: reimagining how ideas are generated, how people collaborate, and who gets to shape the outcome. And more often than not, it’s women who are leading these shifts.

For this column, I spoke with a few designers whose process innovations are driving the kind of quiet revolutions that rarely get headlines but deeply impact our field. Their approaches don’t rely on shock value or singular genius. Instead, they reflect a deeper, more inclusive vision of what innovation can be- one built on systems thinking, empathy, and collective authorship. Storytelling is a key component in creating a connection between a consumer and the product. The story connects the physical object to the consumer’s emotions. These emotional responses can be powerful, creating a bond between the consumer and the product as well as, crucially, cultivating brand loyalty. Packaging, in particular, has evolved to become part of the product experience, as demonstrated by the plethora of unboxing videos on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.

Designing With, Not For: Community-Led Processes

For Hannah Berkin-Harper, IDSA, industrial designer, educator, and the design lead at Street Lab, a nonprofit that creates pop-up programming and placemaking in New York City, design is inseparable from community. Her breakthrough isn’t a product-it’s a process rooted in community engagement and experimentation. “One of the amazing things about designing for pop-ups is the ability to deliver instant transformation of the streetscape that is reactive to community needs,” she says. “We prototype anything we are thinking about and get it out there for people to try. While the end result might take some time, we work together through an iterative process and pilot pop-ups that can lead to more lasting change.”

The result? Solutions that reflect lived experience rather than imposed assumptions. This kind of participatory model pushes back against traditional industrial design workflows, which often isolate designers from the people they serve. It also challenges the idea that designers must lead with answers. Instead, designers become facilitators— stewards of a process that allows insight to emerge organically. In many ways, it’s a radical act of humility.

Rethinking What a “Prototype” Can Be

For Swati Piparsania, Assistant Professor of Industrial Design at Pratt Institute, the body itself becomes the prototype. Her work explores how we choreograph ourselves in space— how design, architecture, and objects shape movement, posture, and behavior. Drawing from sculpture, dance, and performance, Piparsania creates embodied experiences that function as both critique and exploration.

Rather than beginning with sketches or 3D models, her process often starts with a question: What does it feel like to be surveilled? To be constrained by a built system? To reclaim space? From there, she constructs sculptural interventions and wearable provocations that elicit response from the body-awkwardness, tension, release. These reactions become her feedback loop.

In this process, the prototype is not a static thing but a temporal experience. It unfolds through use, reflection, and iteration. Piparsania’s work challenges conventional design tools by making room for emotion, resistance, and improvisation. It blurs the line between object and action, and reframes prototyping as a space for embodied inquiry.

Piparsania says, “I deeply care about social and environmental issues, and I wonder how I get here. Maybe it’s an outcome of being a student of an alternative education system, where many systems of power were challenged and questioned. Then as a designer, our ‘solutions’ were about offering a breadth of possibilities that countered, expanded, and restructured these narratives.”

Her approach is a reminder that not all testing happens in labs-and not all insights come from measuring outcomes. Sometimes the most transformative ideas emerge when we let the body speak first.

Designing Futures with Fiction

Ari Elefterin, a transdisciplinary designer and professor at Parsons School of Design, uses embodied experience as both a method and a site of design innovation. Their project 100 Ways of Sitting invites participants to explore the act of sitting. The prompt is simple, but the outcome is profound: a heightened awareness of the body, environment, and social norms that shape how we occupy space. This exercise can reveal layers of social, spatial, and emotional awareness. Rather than treating the body as a passive recipient of design, Elefterin uses it as an active site of inquiry. Each sitting position becomes a way to ask different questions about comfort, visibility, vulnerability, power, and presence. The project is both poetic and practical, a design method that starts with experience and leads to insight.

In a related project, 100 Ways of Sensorially Connecting with Nature, Elefterin expands this inquiry outward, inviting participants to engage with the natural world through a series of sensory exercises. Some are straightforward, involving only the body; others are more layered, incorporating tool-making-like creating a raft of balloons to float on your breath- analog amplification devices to listen to a lakebed, or a hollow log telescope to see and hear water from the perspective of a tree. These small acts foster a deeper, more intimate connection to the environment. It’s a process that resists quantification but leads to insight about our bodies, our surroundings, and our responsibilities as designers.

Elefterin’s practice represents a breakthrough not in product, but in process. By centering sensory perception and embodied awareness, their work challenges the dominance of visual and functional logic in industrial design. It opens space for more intuitive, ecological, and relational ways of making. In doing so, it offers a model for how design can begin with presence and lead to transformation.

This kind of work, often dismissed as “too conceptual,” is increasingly proving its value in reframing what design is for and whose futures it should serve.

Circular Thinking as a Starting Point

Process breakthroughs also show up in how some designers approach materials and systems, starting not with the product, but with the waste. Rather than asking, “What should we make?” these designers begin by asking, “What materials already exist, and how might they guide what we design?” This reverse-briefing strategy reframes sustainability not as a feature to layer on later, but as the starting condition of the design process itself.

This systems-first mindset leads to radically different outcomes: garments made from agricultural byproducts, objects designed to be taken apart as easily as they’re assembled, or products that can return to the supply chain rather than the landfill. The goal isn’t just to reduce harm, it’s to rethink what design makes possible when waste becomes resource and constraint becomes opportunity.

It’s not a new tool-it’s a shift in framing. And when sustainability is embedded from the beginning, it opens space for new priorities, aesthetics, and lifecycles to emerge.

Designing for Ambiguity

Not all breakthroughs come from certainty. In fact, some of the most impactful process innovations happen when designers intentionally create space for ambiguity. Instead of rushing toward a defined solution, these approaches hold questions open longer, allowing space for reflection, tension, and unexpected insight.

Take the practice of ambiguity-led design, where teams delay the “problem definition” phase to sit with complexity. In healthcare, for instance, this might mean shadowing caregivers without a brief. In social design, it might involve long-term observation before forming a hypothesis. These methods resist the pressure to define too quickly, recognizing that a too-narrow scope can shut down possibilities.

One design researcher in our WID network, Dr. Elham Morshedzadeh, frames it this way: “Ambiguity isn’t a gap to fix—it’s where the real work begins.” This mindset reframes uncertainty as fertile ground rather than failure. By allowing room for open-ended exploration, these designers shift the process from linear to iterative, from transactional to relational. It’s not about working slower: it’s about working more openly. And in a time of accelerated timelines and high-pressure innovation cycles, that openness itself becomes radical.

Breakthroughs in Leadership

Sometimes, the most transformative shift isn’t in a material or method, but in the structure of the team itself. Ayse Birsel co-founder of the design studio Birsel + Seck, exemplifies this by applying her design principles not only to products but also to organizational leadership.

Birsel’s approach, detailed in her book Design the Life You Love, emphasizes deconstructing and reconstructing aspects of life and work to align with one’s values and aspirations. She encourages leaders to view their organizations as design projects, fostering environments that prioritize empathy, collaboration, and adaptability.

In her workshops and writings, Birsel advocates for a leadership style that is inclusive and participatory. By involving team members in the design process of their work environments, she believes organizations can cultivate a sense of ownership and purpose among employees. This method not only enhances team cohesion but also drives innovation by leveraging diverse perspectives.

Birsel’s philosophy underscores the idea that leadership is not a static role but a dynamic process that benefits from continuous reflection and redesign. By embracing design thinking in leadership, she demonstrates how organizations can evolve to meet the changing needs of their teams and the broader market.

The Process Is the Product

In a moment when everyone is looking for the next big thing, these designers remind us that some of the most meaningful breakthroughs are already underway in the ways we listen, collaborate, and imagine. They’re designing not just objects or experiences, but new models for how design itself happens.

And if we want to build a more inclusive, equitable, and future-ready design culture, we’d be wise to start there.

Note: Al assistance was used during the early stages of developing this article, specifically for brainstorming topic directions and outlining structure. All final content and writing are original and authored by the writer.

– Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman, FIDSA

rpf@getinterwoven.com

rpailes@pratt.edu

Yukiko Naoi Joins Interwoven as Creative Director

Interwoven Design Group Expands Medical Design Expertise with the Appointment of Yukiko Naoi as Creative Director

Brooklyn, NY – May 1, 2025 – Interwoven Design Group is thrilled to announce that Yukiko Naoi has joined the team as Creative Director. A seasoned leader in medical product design and a long-time collaborator with Interwoven Design, Naoi brings a unique, multidisciplinary perspective that bridges the worlds of design, medicine, and wellness. Her addition to the team marks a significant expansion of Interwoven’s capabilities in the medical design and packaging fields, reinforcing the company’s commitment to innovative solutions across the market.

Naoi’s career spans over two decades in industrial design, with a specialized focus on medical devices, diagnostics, personal care products, and packaging. As former president of Tanaka Kapec Design Group (TKDG), she led groundbreaking work in medical packaging, human factors research, and healthcare innovation, collaborating with industry leaders such as AstraZeneca, Bausch + Lomb, and Johnson & Johnson. Her extensive experience in regulatory compliance, usability research, and design for manufacturing will be instrumental in advancing Interwoven’s medical design practice, and her structural packaging experience will strengthen their packaging design practice.

Beyond her industrial design expertise, Naoi is also a licensed acupuncturist and founder of Rest NYC, a clinic dedicated to integrative health and wellness. Her ability to merge clinical insights with human-centered design allows her to create products that enhance patient outcomes and experiences, improving everyday lives. This unique combination of skills positions Interwoven Design to expand its influence in patient experience and wearable technology solutions for healthcare.

“We couldn’t be more excited to welcome Yukiko to the team,” said Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman, Founder of Interwoven Design Group. “Her expertise in medical product and packaging design as well as research-driven, user-centered healthcare solutions aligns perfectly with our mission. With Yukiko’s leadership, we are poised to deepen our impact in the healthcare design sector and develop groundbreaking innovations in wearable health technology.”

Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman (left) and Yukiko Naoi (right) collaborate at Interwoven Design Group’s Brooklyn studio, celebrating Yukiko’s new role as Creative Director.

Naoi has been a long-time friend and collaborator of Interwoven Design Group, contributing to multiple medical design projects over the years. In her new role, she will lead the studio’s medical design strategy and development, helping push the boundaries of wearable technology, health innovations, and e-textile solutions. Her expertise will allow Interwoven Design to broaden its partnerships within the medical industry and explore new frontiers in healthcare design.

Interwoven Design Group is a Brooklyn-based product design and development studio specializing in wearable technology, smart textiles, and innovations in health, medical, and consumer products as well as packaging. The studio is a thought leader in the wearable technology sector and committed to supporting women in design. By combining expertise in fashion, engineering, material science, and product design, Interwoven Design Group creates forward-thinking solutions that seamlessly integrate technology with the human body.

Please join us by welcoming Yukiko to the team!

Redefining Design Education: Bridging Tradition and Transition

This article, co-written by Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman, Elham Morshedzadeh, Ph.D., and Annie Abell, was published in the Winter 2024 Issue of IDSA’s INNOVATION Magazine.

Design education today stands at the crossroads of tradition and transformation, demanding that we prepare young designers with both timeless skills and cutting-edge tools to address society’s most wicked problems. Traditional competencies- design research, drawing, 3D form exploration, materials expertise, and problem solving — provide an essential foundation, yet they remain insufficient if students are not also trained to critically assess which challenges merit their attention. It is not enough for aspiring designers to master techniques; they must also cultivate the curiosity, resilience, and analytical acuity necessary to navigate a rapidly changing landscape.

In an ideal setting, education serves as the launchpad for industrial design innovation, nurturing visionary thinkers who blend art with engineering to craft transformative solutions. However, equipping students with this comprehensive skill set is a persistent challenge, especially when many academic institutions struggle to adapt their curricula to the fast pace of industry change.

Bridging the gap between theory and practice is an opportunity layered with complexities. As an active member of both IDSA and academia, I witness firsthand the struggle to define exactly what our future leaders need to learn.

IDSA champions educational approaches that break tree of traditional disciplinary silos, advocating for rigorous, interdisciplinary models that merge conceptual insights with tangible, real-world applications. Yet the hard question remains: How, exactly, do we implement this vision in educational practice?

To do so, we must reexamine and modernize our current educational models, ensuring that they integrate diverse fields and instill a spirit of innovation rooted in practical experience.

This modern imperative requires rethinking our approach to instruction and embracing a model that values both technical proficiency and the soft skills of critical thinking. Beyond merely teaching students how to execute design methods, we must guide them to question underlying assumptions, evaluate potential impacts, and decide which challenges are worth pursuing. Lifelong curiosity and resilience are as crucial to their development as technical expertise. Though this strategic direction presents significant challenges, it lays the groundwork for nurturing designers capable of tackling them. In an era where technology and market needs are in constant flux, evolving our design education is not just beneficial—it is essential for cultivating leaders skilled in both analysis and creative expression.

IDSA continues to advocate for curricula that move beyond conventional boundaries, promoting interdisciplinary approaches that merge conceptual insights with real-world applications. This vision requires educators to collaborate with industry professionals and integrate cross-disciplinary knowledge, drawing from fields such as sociology, environmental science, and computer science. For example, some pioneering programs now embed project-based learning, giving students firsthand experience in problem-solving, ethical design, and innovation management.

Today, boundaries between disciplines are increasingly blurred. Creativity, technology, and cultural understanding converge to create fertile ground for innovation-a phenomenon some have termed “expanding horizons.” Furthermore, emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence Al are reshaping the design process itself. Al is not merely a tool; it is revolutionizing the way we think about customization, efficiency, and user-centric design. By integrating Al and other innovative technologies, educational models can empower future designers to harness data, optimize processes, and even predict trends- pushing the boundaries of what is possible within our field.

Reflecting on this evolution, Elham Morshedzadeh, PhD, IDSA, Assistant Professor of Industrial Design at the University of Houston, says, “I believe industrial design has had a decent history in creative and adaptive teaching methods over decades of its existence. What began as hands-on practice within four-walled studios has expanded into immersive learning experiences that take students to streets, homes, hospitals, and even the depths of human thought and emotion.”

For Morshedzadeh, this journey highlights design education’s capacity as a catalyst for innovation, empathy, and societal impact. She emphasizes that design education is fundamentally about training designers to “understand, adopt, [and] evolve to create the most fit solutions.” Moreover, she argues that, with an emphasis on adaptability and observation-based solutions, design educators must structure projects and curricula to allow students to integrate new tools and technologies as project needs and industry advancements emerge.

Adding another dimension to this discussion, Annie Abell, IDSA, Associate Professor of Practice in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Ohio State University, offers a parallel perspective from engineering education. She explains: “I am part of a team conducting a years-long project to modernize and completely redevelop the undergraduate mechanical engineering curriculum at Ohio State. A major hurdle is the speed of a comprehensive curriculum redevelopment project compared to the speed at which technology and industry is changing. For example, if it takes us four years… to develop and implement a new curriculum, what has changed in those four years? We will likely already be behind the times.”

Abell’s insights underscore the inherent tension between the deliberate pace of academic bureaucracy and the rapid evolution of the commercial world. She stresses that the solution is to create curricula that are “agnostic to specific software, specific tools, or specific technologies” and focused instead on adaptable skills and a mindset of active learning and problem solving.

Ultimately, as we reimagine design education, it is essential to create learning environments that foster collaboration, adaptability, and forward-thinking strategies. By embracing an interdisciplinary framework that values robust technical training alongside the nurturing of critical soft skills, we can prepare designers-and engineers -to lead, innovate, and drive meaningful change in a complex, ever-evolving world. The bridge between academia and industry grows stronger when educators are not isolated in their ivory towers but remain actively engaged in the professional realm. Many academic programs already benefit from part-time professors who work full-time in industry; these educators bring first-hand experience and up-to-date insights that help schools stay in tune with the rapidly changing demands of the market.

When academics actively participate in industry projects, research collaborations, and professional networks, they not only enrich their own teaching but also inspire their students to embrace real-world challenges. This symbiotic relationship ensures that classroom theories are constantly informed by the latest trends, technologies, and practices from the field. It transforms the educational journey into one that is dynamic, relevant, and immediately applicable-a crucial factor in an era where change is the only constant.

As we build and reinforce this bridge, it becomes clear that the future of design education relies on a model in which industry and academia work side by side, each challenging and informing the other. In doing so, we create a feedback loop that continually updates curricula to reflect emerging trends, nurtures innovation, and ensures that graduates are equipped with both the timeless wisdom of foundational skills and the agility to adapt to new technologies and market realities.

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