At the Professional Science Master’s (PSM) program, we carefully consider industry trends and workforce demands when preparing our students for the future. We launched the Product Design concentration as part of this mission. Coordinated by Dr. Rupa Misra, Ed.D., this concentration teaches students the overall design, manufacturing, and marketing process for technology-based products from a human-centered perspective. This is the first degree in product design offered at Rutgers University.
Dr. Misra also serves as concentration coordinator of User Experience Design (UXD), a program that he has expanded significantly. Both UXD and Product Design share the principle of designing for human happiness and satisfaction. The Product Design concentration focuses on maximizing the product’s usability and the experience of the user.
In the fall semester of 2022, we ran the new course Introduction to Product Design and Development. This fundamental course covers the basic concepts of product design with an emphasis on three areas: marketing, design, and manufacturing. Three students shared their experiences in this course.
Harika Kasireddy, MBS’23 (UXD), enrolled because she believed it would make her a strong candidate as she applies for jobs.
“I wanted to choose an elective that would be as relevant as possible to what I want to work in or a skill I can build,” said Kasireddy. “Product design is obviously becoming a very up-and-coming field, so to learn more about it as well as the processes behind it will definitely be useful for future interviews.”
Ledys Castaneda-Amaral, MBS’23 (Food Science), chose this elective because she knew that it would help her excel in a new professional role.
“Within my current role at my company,” said Castaneda-Amaral, “I had the opportunity to pivot my career from research and development to supply chain thanks to the MBS.” She attributed this success to our core business courses. “All of those classes allowed me to build foundations to talk to other people about my business side.”
In this new role, Castaneda-Amaral needed to understand the larger picture of product development and design. She chose this course to help her communicate with others about the end-to-end process.
Ryan Layden, MBS’23 (UXD), enrolled in this course to improve his skills in user experience and user interface design.
“I enrolled in the course due to my desire to develop a more holistic approach to UX and UI design. This holistic approach includes blending business goals and long-term strategy with user needs to develop a product. I figured that this course would be able to provide that based on my readings, and it certainly did.”
What Introduction to Product Design and Development Offers
This course provides a comprehensive process overview of product design with an emphasis on the areas of marketing, design, and manufacturing.
“The class exceeded my expectations in so many ways,” said Layden. Core concepts discussed in this course include:
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Identification of product opportunities, the definition of the market segments, and the identification of customer needs
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Defining the form of the product to best meet customer needs
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Purchasing, distribution and installation that is the supply chain
In this course, students complete a group project to cover the generic product development process, adressing processes such as planning, concept development, system-level design, detail design, testing, and developing a prototype.
Castaneda-Amaral’s team worked on a mobile application allowing users to adopt pets, while Layden’s team created a personal care and beauty product hub.
A key element of PSM is our incorporation of experiential learning. Here are some of the elements that make this an impressive MBS course.
- Expert Insight
Dr. Misra welcomed industry experts to share lectures with his class. These speakers provided students with relevant information and networking opportunities. Before each lecture, Dr. Misra encouraged students to connect with speakers (and each other) via LinkedIn.
“The speakers they had each week provided phenomenal insight into how the curriculum plays out in a variety of companies,” said Layden. “It helps keep material current and gives you access to industry experts and leaders. Having the opportunity to ask questions to folks who may be your boss one day is a gift.”
Kasireddy had a similar view. “Part of why I enrolled [in PSM] was to meet people of different calibers and expertise and see what they're actually doing with what we're learning.”
Inviting experts also provided students with specialized expertise.
“Nobody can be a subject matter expert in all the fields,” said Castaneda-Amaral. “The fact that [Dr. Misra] brings a subject matter expert for each topic for each week means a lot.”
In the same semester, Dr. Misra moderated the panel “The Social Responsibility of UX and Product Designers” where industry professionals tackled ethical questions such as whether designers should consider the environmental impacts of a product.
- Job-Relevant Instruction
This course provided an opportunity for students to build skills in teamwork, collaboration, and idea generation, said Kasireddy. These abilities are essential when it comes to the workforce.
“Whether you are going directly into product design or not,” said Kasireddy, “it's a useful knowledge to have, especially as it's becoming such a big thing in the workforce and it's almost in collaboration with user experience design. There's a lot of opportunity there.”
“This class is highly relevant to the professional world,” said Layden. “The course focused on teaching you how to justify the overall product, design choices, and feature selection given real-world constraints such as budgets and growth potential.”
- Real-World Application
This course also incorporates assignments reflective of the real world. Castaneda-Amaral shared that she performed a costing for salami and compared her assignment against Walmart’s price for the same product.
“My final cost was 95% close to the Walmart price,” she said. “And I felt very happy. I said, I can use this in my real life.”
Castaneda-Amaral also noted that during class discussions, students applied course concepts to real-world examples.
Overall, this course allows students to become holistic, well-rounded learners. Layden and Castaneda-Amaral provided advice for prospective students.
“If you are going to take this class,” said Castaneda-Amaral, “make sure that you work in a product that is relevant to your career.” She recommended that students use this class to add value to their individual learning curves.
“Take the course,” said Layden. “Out of all the courses I have taken within the MBS, this has been the most practical and applicable to developing physical and digital products. Another piece of advice: From the perspective of your day-to-day activities, start to look for opportunities where something can be optimized, reworked, or invented. There are opportunities all around you, and if you find something that you think might be an interesting idea, keep that in the back of your head and bring it to this class because you might be able to develop it into something really wonderful, and even something that you didn’t picture ahead of time.”
If you would like to learn more about the Product Design concentration, read our Q&A with Dr. Misra.