I was taught Industrial Design Engineering at Delft, University of Technology. A great education which I can recommend to everyone. However, I think it should reconsider its mission statement. Take its name for example: ‘Industrial’ Design. It refers to the era from which it stems (somewhere in the sixties). Back then it was all plastic fantastic, and mass production was the way to build. Many of the courses I took involved designing products for mass production. Terms like ‘design for manufacturing’, ‘design for assembly’, it all aimed at mass producing goods in the most efficient and cheapest way.
However, 40 years after its foundation the world demands more and more flexible, personal and unique products. I first noticed this a few years ago when students, including me, sought for interesting graduation topics and found the industry demanded design solutions in single produced products or small series. Most of the graduation proposals that students handed in at the faculty’s graduation commission got declined, since these topics did not involve mass production. How could they be so rigid and blind for what was happening out there?

Recent trends and innovations all point in the same direction, which is the exact opposite of mass production (The Long Tail). Here’s an example that illustrates what I mean: in a few years people will be able to produce and replace certain broken parts in their coffee machine themselves, simply by downloading a CAD-file, which they’ve paid for, and printing it with their own affordable 3D-printer. No mass production whatsoever is involved here!

In these cases the ON-OFF connection will become more and more important, since the web is the most flexible platform you can think of. It can help people with designing, customizing and even building their own products. So start designing for flexibility, start designing for the web, start designing Meta Products!