AUXILIARY X

After extensive experience as industrial design lecturers, business owners, and consultants, AUXILIARY observed a growing disparity between the capabilities of design graduates and the industry requirements of entry-level designers. This results in a shortage of industrial designers with the threshold knowledge, skills, and experience necessary to gain access to– and practise in– industry. With industry know-how as a resource, the challenge was to reimagine a design education service that addressed three latent needs of next generation designers – awareness of industry expectations, industry relevant design education, and exposure to career opportunities.

A breakthrough outcome-based design education service, AUXILIARY X offers an additional pathway to practise as an entry-level industrial designer. It's a design doing approach validated by achievement of industry standards for design services and design excellence. AUXILIARY X is a cyclic, marketable consultancy experience. With a new product development course at its core, this systematic program is packed with more elements – orientation, prospective project protection, celebratory industry and public showcases, and application for awards. The program gets better with each delivery. Exemplar interval improvements include experiential ethnography, catered rest breaks, mid-program recess, and a design internship accolade.

AUXILIARY X enables emerging design practitioners to confidently and positively contribute to society as design employees, freelancers, or entrepreneurs. It has proven to: • Produce award-winning next generation designers. • Enhance employability of young designers. • Increase the design talent pool, with almost 90% of participants receiving internships or employment at prestigious companies and local SMEs. • Give industry clients access to fresh ideas, future employees, and commercially viable, innovative design concepts. • Attract influential brands to patent and further commercially develop 10–20% of projects. • Educate industry clients on the value of design in business. • Activate community makerspaces and increase public awareness of industrial design.

Accelerated, convenient schedule. 17-weeks of night-time sessions and after-hours support. With seven project milestones to meet, it’s intense, inspiring and invigorating! Expert educators. Design industry leaders manage and mentor young designers through a true consultancy experience. Real commercial inputs and outputs. Real clients evaluate feasible concept designs against real strategic and tactical briefs from a business perspective. Next level practices. Learners are contractually bound by confidentiality, intellectual property, and professional software license terms. Advanced conceptual frameworks. A design-led innovation process that elegantly integrates newer, agile models of design with the stage-gate double-diamond process. New holistic design content. Pure transfer of traditional industrial design knowledge and supplemental strategic, tactical, and practical skills (parametric modelling, for example). Inclusive training style. With approaches from informative presentations and live demonstrations to practice drills, 2 of 9 project collaboration, and pitches, AUXILIARY X engages everyone. Superior educational materials. Sharing of custom design practice templates and handbooks, folio and good design case studies, professional networks, and resource references. On point system. First educational user of the innovative, full-cloud 3D CAD and file storage system – Onshape. MIT approved workspaces. All-inclusive membership, facility inductions, and private access to The Edge, State Library of Queensland’s studio, workshop, and exhibition venues.