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This paper describes how students are taught to design (computer) games and toys in a broad sense of the word at the Department of Industrial Design at the Eindhoven University of Technology. The curriculum is highly project driven, which means that students acquire a large amount of hands-on experience during concrete projects. One major theme within the department is the design of playful interactions, which focuses on the design of innovative concepts that support expressing oneself and exploration. In this theme, we design for opportunities and exploration instead of goal-oriented products. Our educational approach is illustrated with examples both from an assignment on game design and design projects on playful interaction.

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In this paper Freed is presented, a system that enables design students to spatially organize their digital collection, define relations between collection content and reflect on it. The system features a force-based layout that allows to explore spatial organizations, and hence to gain new insights. Its main advantage over existing software, is that it empowers the students to create different views of their digital collection. A view is a spatial organization of a selection of the collection content and its relations. It can e.g. be used for a specific design activity or project phase, for organizing work around a specific topic, or for explaining the perspective of a given student or stakeholder. Feedback of design students working with Freed during their design projects, and results from a workshop as measured by a questionnaire, show positive prospects for adoption of the system during the design process.