OPDD students work in teams to develop package concepts
Package designers from ICON Health & Fitness and ThermoFisher Scientific hosted a workshop for Outdoor Product Design and Development (OPDD) students focused on the process of package design. The workshop ended with an afternoon design sprint where students were challenged to create new packaging solutions for a heart rate monitor product.
Tanner Stephenson, a package designer at ICON and sophomore in OPDD, lead the workshop with Adrian Meza of ThermoFisher Scientific.
“The best part about these sprints is the experience of watching students quickly get information and make clear, unbiased decisions for their design,” Stephenson said. “It was a great way to reteach myself the basics and fall in love with the process of design.”
Students of all abilities are able to participate and contribute to the process of creating new products and design solutions. Freshman Amanda Wangberg and participated and found the challenge very rewarding.
“I participated in the design sprint because I want to learn as much as I can while here in the program. I’m trying be involved and I’m just excited about all the different opportunities,” Wanberg said. “Coming in I didn’t think I would really have anything to bring to the table since I’m a freshman, but I found that the ideas came naturally and my group listened to what I had to say. It was really fun working with a few different people and balancing our strengths to create something.”
Design sprints provide really cool opportunities to work in a hands on setting with other students as you tackle design challenges. It’s really rewarding to come up with concepts and create prototypes in such a short amount of time.
The package sprint was especially unique beuase all students, including those representing the companies were also current students in either OPDD or Technology Systems.
Package design has unique challenges and constraints which Meza believes is a great challenge for traditional product designers.
“It was great to see what the students could come up with based on time, materials, and restraints,” Mesa said. “The design sprint helped introduce a new concept and provided a hands-on-experience that helped students learn and retain information about the world of packaging.
Industry collaborations made possible through the Manufacturing and Outdoor Products Support Hub, a partnership between Utah Manufacturing Extension Service and Outdoor Product Design & Development.
