Smart Students, Smart Products

Student projects forecasting the designs of the future will be on exhibit this week at Cal State Long Beach.

The annual Senior Show will include the work of more than 40 graduating students in the department of design, one of six degree programs in the College of the Arts.

“To a greater degree than ever before, this show demonstrates the extent to which technology affects every aspect of our lives,” said Chuck Leinbach, department chairman. “We’re moving into the era of smart products.”

On display this week in the newly refurbished gallery of the school’s Design Building will be senior projects from two programs: industrial design and interior architecture.

Each student has a display space for the graphics, images and three-dimensional computer-aided design models of their conceptual projects.

Industrial design, which includes all the products used in our home, office and recreational lives, is most visibly affected by technology, Leinbach said. With the proliferation of computer chips, even a household appliance as modest as the kitchen toaster can be programmed with memory and intelligence.

One student project is a “digital postcard,” a type of precoded camera that enables the user to instantly transmit, via Internet, the image to a computer anywhere in the world. Another is a police officer’s vest embedded with millimeter-wave technology that allows the wearer to detect through walls or doors people inside a building or room.

For customers in a large retail store, a computerized index would locate any item the shopper seeks on an electric map. And another student’s “stuff finder” uses a high-tech labeling machine to assign electronic signals that instantly retrieve items, like keys, that are easily lost.

“These are all projects the students originated using available technology,” Leinbach said. “Our purpose is to turn out designers who can identify problems that real people have in the real world.”

Not only do industrial designers place new emphasis on technology, he said, they are increasingly being sought to help businesses decide what products they should be making. “Historically, industrial designers were engineers who were given a project to make. Today, they are more involved in the process, and it has become important to understand there are many unsolved problems and many unsatisfactory solutions, driven by the rapid pace of technology.”

The interior-architecture student projects cover a range of commercial buildings, restaurants and retail stores. “They are concerned with areas such as traffic patterns, venting, heating and air conditioning,” Leinbach said.

The scope ranges from large malls to boutique shops. “This is still a relatively new degree program,” he said. “It covers everything that has to be done after the structure has been built, but before the walls are painted and the furnishings installed.”

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CSULB design department Senior Show, Tuesday through Friday, Design Building, 1250 Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach. Hours are 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday, and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday.