Inside out and outside in - taking product design education into the real world and bringing the real world into product design education

Product design education has a long established practice of involving part-time and visiting staff in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes and the benefits on both sides are clearly recognised. A natural extension of this is the live-client project. In this case there is the potential for conflict between academic requirements and commercial imperatives. The paper represented by the authors reviews live-client and commercially sponsored projects from both academic institutions and, in the light of the relative successes and failures of these projects, propose guidelines for creating the conditions where both academic and commercial objectives may be met.