Design for Kids and Families POLI.design - Milan (Italy)

Overview

The Design for Kids and Families course from POLI.design - Milan (Italy) objective is to develop a transversal competence to move confidently between concrete constraints, such as security and law, and abstract goals such as cultural, cognitive, educational, recreational and ethical.

The Master in Design for Kids & Families is organized in partnership with Assogiocattoli, which represents Italian manufacturers and distributors working in this industry. Italy generally excels in design (that means culture, method and practice of project and production) in several fields like fashion, food and creativity applied to multiple activities, but in the toy and childcare productions Italian design has yet to play a key role in building a recognizable identity.

The “Design System” and “System of Enterprise”, shows significant episodes but certainly not a coherent and recognizable oversight in children’s products, in furniture for children, in the game and in the toy sector. From this scenario it comes a need in poly-technical and multi-skill training.

Designers and, in particular, strategic designers have the role of create scenarios understanding the many aspects and skills that compose the system.

Design a toy or a product/service for children needs the skills to design the whole system of artefacts, around the child and for products and services.

Too often actually products for children have been interpreted as the declination of pre-existing goods, overloaded with signs, functions and colours inserted in a deliberately redundant packaging, or the unmediated reproduction of an adult object.

Today technology offers interesting opportunities but often it is not a vehicle of qualified contents able to generate new ways of playing, learning and socializing or stimulating creativity and imagination, but more often it is a self-referential and not suitable for children component.

If we think today about the “Design for Kids”, then we realize the number and type of skills needed to design a quality product aimed at the world of children.

Career opportunities:

Master in Design for Kids & Families has three types of employment opportunities:

• Freelance professionals and consultants able of thinking, developing and managing product service system projects and educational activities (training, laboratories, workshops etc.);
• Startuppers able of giving life to new businesses within offering for kids by taking cross-cutting opportunities in different sectors and areas (from technology to services);
• Positions in research and development offices, technical office, marketing and communication of companies, agencies and institutions that have business related to the child system;
• Positions in retail specialized in the child system.

The Master also has the cultural goal of training mothers and dads aware of the role of play in the educational development of children. The Master aims to train professionals able to exploit all the potentials and opportunities of technology and markets, putting the child at the center of any design process and innovation.