A playful take on product innovation

A miniature city with a controllable sun that demonstrates geographic locations and solar power. A treasure chest-like lockbox puzzle that aims to demystify how to use common tools. A self-contained “Save the City” flood simulator.

These are just some of the innovative ideas students recently designed for one of the University of Minnesota’s most popular courses, Product Innovation Lab (iLab). It’s an introduction to hands-on, team-based product design, and it’s open to any student who wants a real-world product design experience.

The experiential learning course through the University of Minnesota’s College of Design has students work in small teams, each tasked with turning an idea into a marketplace-ready product in the space of a semester. The final presentation, “PLAYsentations,” is a playful showcase of each team’s results.

“It's probably unlike any presentation you've ever done before,” says course instructor and Assistant Professor Carlye Lauff. “It’s basically children's theater meets an Apple product launch.”

And while the final presentation may not reflect most workplaces, the course is very much structured to represent how people in the workplace come together to achieve a common goal, providing students with collaborative experience applicable in almost any field.

“It is a very technical class,” says Lauff. “We make a lot of prototypes, and that is important, but what's equally important is teaching teams how to work well together … soft skills, like how you communicate, your working style, and being comfortable enough to voice your opinion.” 

“You're never going to be working solo unless you go off as a solo entrepreneur … no matter what your job is after you graduate,” adds Lauff. “So figuring out how to work through team dynamics is important.”

While the course is required for product design majors, it attracts students from a range of disciplines across the University of Minnesota, from marketing majors to mechanical engineering students. 

Students in iLab are grouped in teams of 5-6, each with varying strengths and skill sets, who assume roles like visual design lead, engineering lead, project manager, and more. They start by coming up with six product ideas, generally around the broad theme of play. Then they refine their ideas to one product per team.

Tapping industry expertise in the Twin Cities

Ingrid Ebbesen ’26, a junior product design major, says that one of the key benefits of the course are the volunteer industry mentors each group is paired with. They act as “lab instructors,” working closely with students for several hours each week throughout the semester to help them overcome any challenges. Many of these volunteers are former students who took the course and have gone on to work for businesses like 3M, Target, Medtronic, General Mills, and many others.

“It was really valuable to have people who have gone through the process of creating products for a client at a larger scale, because that's something we don't really get to do until we graduate and go off and get a job,” says Ebbesen.

Jeff Carter, a principal designer with Target who is in his eighth year as a volunteer lab instructor, says the students inspire him to keep coming back. “There's a lot of talent that comes through here,” says Carter. “The energy that they bring and their thought processes, the collaboration … gives me energy and resets my passion for the design process.”

Lauff says there are other benefits from having industry representatives there, too.

“Our students often get internships or jobs with these companies, or these people become their formal mentors and help them land the job post-graduation,” says Lauff. Some past students have even gone on to have their class products be created and sold by area businesses.

Designing interactive STEM activities for kids

Hannah Gootzeit '25 is a senior product design major. Her group created a product called WeldLab. “It’s a toy that teaches kids how to weld like a real TIG welder,” says Gootzeit. “So kids can use it to melt crayon wax onto other crayon wax pieces, or weld it all together and make mosaic art, or they can build structures with crayon beams and things like that.” 

Gootzeit says her favorite part of the course may have been seeing her team’s product in action in the hands of the kids it was designed to engage.

“We got to go to E-STEM Middle School (in Woodbury, Minnesota) and interact with middle schoolers—the people who are going to be the ultimate target market for our product,” says Gootzeit. “It was really interesting to see them use the product and give us feedback … what they liked and what they didn't like. And the kids were really into it.”

Ebbesen’s team also used crayons in their product, which they named “Crayon-U-Facturing.”

“It’s teaching students about common manufacturing methods like sand-casting or injection molding using classroom materials like crayon wax,” says Ebbesen, who played the part of a costumed crayon in her team’s PLAYsensations skit, held on May 8. 

She says the course upends the go-it-alone aspect of many of her previous experiences.

“I feel like the classic stereotype of a college group project is where one person does all the work, and everyone else is kind of slacking off,” says Ebbesen. “It was a great experience to come into this class and get to work with electrical engineers or mechanical engineers or marketing students, and to really see how all of their talents and what they're learning in their degrees can contribute to a big project like this. And we all have unique skills. One person would not have been able to do the work we ended up doing.”

Ebbesen, too, says her favorite aspect of the course was seeing her team’s product in use by those for whom it was designed. 

“I really enjoyed getting to test stuff with middle schoolers, and I hope that it does get used by this group or in Saint Paul public schools,” she says. “I think it would be really cool.”