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DPD – Discover Product Design

Product Design is Everywhere: Take five seconds right now to look around and note as many products as you can. Just about everything you will see or interact with today was designed. If five seconds is enough to appreciate a room full of product design, imagine how much we’re going to pack into five days! Discover Product Design (DPD) will give you a broad preview of the world of product design. We’ll visit local design firms, meet cool people, work on a few small design projects, and get a head start exploring MIT, Cambridge, and Boston. No prior experience is necessary—we’re excited to get you excited about design!

Get Inspired

Every designer needs inspiration, so we’ll be visiting local Boston design firms to talk with product designers in their element. We also plan to visit local museums and other Boston points of interest.

Get Equipped

Designing the next big product is no fun without the right tools, so we’ll be providing plenty of tools for you to work with during the week. Best of all, these tools (and everything you design with them) will be yours to keep after DPD. We’ll also tour the great MIT facilities on campus to help you realize all the ideas you’ll come up with in your next four years

Get Creative

You’ll have the opportunity to create your own product and work on smaller projects throughout the week that address relevant topics in design. Don’t worry if you don’t have much experience—we’ll give you all the experience you need to address any design challenge.

Get Fed

We can’t expect you to be creative on an empty stomach, so we’ll be arranging three meals a day for you. We’ll reach out to you about dietary restrictions and food preferences once you’re admitted to DPD.

Quotes from previous years’ participants:

● “Creative, hands-on, FUN, and eye-opening. What more could you want?”

● “DPD was a great introduction to product design, condensing all the aspects of design: from ideation to brainstorming to prototyping, all into 6 days of fun.”

● “DPD was a great balance of seeing, hearing about, and being a direct part of the design process.”

● “Take advantage of every single moment in DPD because a week can go by really fast.”

● “If you don’t know what design is, take this FPOP! Even if you do, take this FPOP!”

● “The people I met through DPD have shaped my experience at MIT. I chose DPD to learn how to build cool stuff but I ended up finding my community and some of my best friends”

● “DPD means so much to me because almost my entire experience at MIT was shaped by the mentors and peers in DPD.”

● “Many of my friends are past DPD mentors and students and my education in mechanical engineering was shaped by how much fun I had building stuff in DPD”

DPD Specifics

  • Dates: Tuesday August 22- Sunday, August 27, 2023
  • Available spaces: 20
  • Cost: $155