New Design Ideas

This paper presents a practice-based account of an academic-industrial collaboration in an undergraduate furniture design course at Institut Teknologi Bandung. It describes a teaching model that embeds students in real industrial contexts through authentic briefs from partner companies, regular mentoring by industry designers and facilitation by academic staff, supported by a formal framework for industrial design rights and potential revenue sharing. Evidence for the value of this model comes from tangible outputs such as working prototypes and registered industrial design rights and from structured reflections by the teaching team and industry partners, rather than formal empirical data. The paper discusses how students navigated tensions between design idealism and production constraints and how conflicts around manufacturability, cost, market fit and intellectual property were used as learning opportunities within a tripartite agreement among students, the university and companies. It concludes by proposing an industry-embedded apprenticeship framework that outlines key inputs, mechanisms and expected outcomes and indicates how similar collaborations might be adapted in other design programmes and industrial settings.