TEACHING INDUSTRIAL DESIGN AS AN ASPECT OF LOCAL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

The distance that exists between companies and the approach to teaching industrial design is still extensive in Chile. On the other hand, large companies suggest that integrating innovation by design is complex, due to the high costs involved in intervening in production lines. The innovation approach applied by companies focuses on technological change and not on the incorporation of industrial design as a factor of change. The objective of the research is to develop an experience of university-company co-creation, which allows to renew the supply of the board industry, one of the main sources of economic income for the country. In addition, it seeks to define the development of an industrial symbiosis that makes explicit innovative collaborations between various agents of the system that supports the development of companies.

The methodology used includes the following stages:
1. University - company collaboration, through the relationship of industrial design students and the innovation area of the company;
2. Establishment of parameters based on the productive possibilities of the company and its approaches to diversify the offer;
3. Design of patterns for surfaces of Medium-density fiberboard (MDF);
4. User studies to define parameters for future user acceptance;
5. Definition of the manufacturing process without the intervention of parallel technological lines;
6. Portfolio with new texture ideas for MDF boards and their market projection.

In conclusion, the university-company relationship allowed to specify proposals based on the renewal of the appearance of MDF boards, demonstrating that it is possible to integrate design with low technological intervention and discrete costs. This approach allows opening new perspectives to the development of the company and with it the territory. The possibility of integrating designers in training, based on the knowledge of their capabilities, a renewed offer that boosts the company's sales, new applications for materials with a renewed appearance are potential factors of success and diversification of the productive matrix. The results consist in the design of four textures expressed in high fidelity prototypes, tested at the user level and characterized in the laboratory, transferred to the company. Students and businessmen have understood the value of design in a practical way, as another function within the company, in its project phase.