During the first part of my European Trip I was hosted by Muireann McMahon a lecturer at the University of Limerick in product design. Product design is part of the Manufacturing and Operations Engineering faculty. Ryder Meggit from Element06 and Onzo came along for the session before the Reform08 Conference.

During the first part of my European Trip I was hosted by Muireann McMahon a lecturer at the University of Limerick in product design. Product design is part of the Manufacturing and Operations Engineering faculty. Ryder Meggit from Element06 and Onzo came along for the session before the Reform08 Conference.

We spent a day with the students and some staff working on applying the concept of life cycle thinking to product development. The group of students were final (4th) year students in their undergraduate degree programme. We presented some of our work and ideas which focussed on systematic, evidence based approach that is common between element 06 and Locus Research.

We then moved onto the workshop for the students which focussed on the ‘Core Function’ concept which looks to redefine a product in life cycle terms, effectively as a system. We then looked at the life cycle using our impacts of environmental aspects worksheet (IoEA) which is downloadable from our resources site. There was a break where Ryder and I were able to talk to the lecturers about their programme and also our work which was great.

The afternoon moved on to designing or constructing a new product life cycle. A difficult concept to convey as designers are not really equipped with the tools of system oriented thinking. The students came up with some great ideas and got into the spirit of it. We wrapped up with a question and answer session which focussed on how they can present themselves effectively to other people and prospective employers. It also discussed their projects and what which were pretty diverse, ranging from from a farmers market stall (enabling ease of setup and take down), a body boarding fin, a rugby tackling product, to a washing machine. The University itself is a pretty impressive institution with about 18-20,000 students and a large well grounded campus. We did not have time to discuss the synergies that are achieved through being part of an established engineering school, but it would be useful to know. Hopefully we can get Muireann to talk about this in a post in the near future.