Students in the Design Program work on a very wide range of projects, from foundational design exercises to "wicked problem" projects in energy, sustainability, health, and more, often with industry affiliates. Undergraduates in the Product Design major concern themselves with the invention and design of products, services and experiences that benefit society. The program teaches a design process that encourages creativity, craftsmanship, and personal expression, and emphasizes brainstorming and need finding to discover latent or under-served human needs. This methodology, called Design Thinking, is taken further in the graduate program, combining business factors, technology, and human factors in a mix that produces powerful designers. "Building is thinking," and our classes use a problem-based learning methodology where the students learn by doing in studio-based classes in both the Art and Mechanical Engineering departments. They also have a state-of-the-art facility, the Product Realization Lab http://prl.stanford.edu/ at their disposal to realize their ideas and inventions.

Our philosophy is that all great design solutions are the result of inspired teamwork. But the traditional approach to teamwork is not enough to solve today's wicked problems. We believe you have to collaborate more deeply, so we teach and practice what we call "radical collaboration". Radical collaboration melds students and professors, practitioners and researchers, the academy and industry to produce extraordinary experiences and results. Students participate in the design of their coursework, industry provides instructors and real-world problems to work on, and professors develop new insights in teaching and research by prototyping classes in real-time. Design is a constantly evolving field and studying Design at Stanford is a constantly evolving experience.