Toy Product Design
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this hands-on product design course, previously listed as SP.778 and cross-listed as 2.00B, in which small teams of five or six students design and prototype new toys around a yearly theme. Working with a local sponsor, an elementary school, and mentors from toy design and engineering fields, students move through the full development process: identifying customer needs, brainstorming, sketching, sketch modeling, concept development, design aesthetics, detailed design, and prototyping. The course also builds written, visual, and oral communication skills. It ends with Playsentations, a public presentation of finished toys to professional designers, engineers, and the elementary school children who inspired the projects. Course materials include assignments and project structure from MIT's Mechanical Engineering department, free to access through MIT OpenCourseWare with no certificate offered.