January Term at NYU Abu Dhabi is a strange time. The campus seems empty, devoid of people walking between classes and meetings. The library, which at any other point would be filled with students, has a few lonely visitors immune to the deafening emptiness and silence. The only times the campus visibly overflows with life is during meal times, with the Campus East Dining Hall and Marketplace receiving hungry students who will soon disappear back into class or into the relaxation of the nice weather or their comfy dorms. Those students who were enrolled in Design and Innovation however, had a very different experience.

With working conditions that rival almost any entry-level job, Design and Innovation is an infamous J-term. From nine to five, Sunday to Friday, 62 students graced the Arts Center for all of January 2019, unlike previous semesters hosted in the Engineering Design Studio. They were under the instruction of Lecturer of Engineering Design Matthew Karau and Assistant Professor of Practice of Design Felix Beck, spending the little time they had away from the classroom pulling all nighters to finish their work.

Although students often find the workload and long hours challenging, the course has been a success over its nine years as a staple of the Engineering Program. Throughout the years, the course and its instructors have tried to teach the skills necessary for engineers to go beyond the technical knowledge learned in their other courses.

The course, both previously and today, is designed to expose students to the creative process associated with engineering and to familiarize them with rapid prototyping. Early on in the history of NYUAD, the Saadiyat Island campus was still only a plan and the provisional home of the university lacked spaces that students enjoy today such as the Arts Center or the woodshop. The very first generations of NYUAD engineers used to venture out to Mussafah, in order to use mechanical equipment unavailable at the time.There were limited places where students could go to produce creative work.

The campus and the university’s curriculum have come a long way from the first Design and Innovation class in 2010. New spaces for students to be creative and explore are scattered around the Saadiyat campus. Design courses are now available for students who want to improve or learn new skills. The Interactive Media program offers the chance for students to explore the intersection between engineering and art. With access to creative outlets and opportunities to learn prototyping and construction, the instructors have had to take a step back and evaluate what the course can do for engineering students, as Matthew Karau explained.

“What do we still need to do for engineering students when design is taken care of by somebody else? When Interactive Media offers you the chance to kind of play around with electronics and do sort of personal passion projects,” said Karau.

Karau, who set up the Engineering Design Studio, has great expectations for NYUAD engineers.

“I would love to see an engineer who can navigate these different spaces so that they're not only an engineer but they're ready to be a kind of higher level contributor. You know we love to think about our engineers being at that level of organization.”

Design and Innovation has now evolved to allow students the opportunity to ask and develop meaningful ideas. The course’s primary goal is to prepare students to ask the kind of questions that drive them and matter to the larger community.

The changes in the course mean a move away from a focus on the design process and integrating design-based thinking into the engineering education.

“This whole idea focused on the designer's mind as the kind of mind that we all should strive toward in terms of how we come up with ideas [reduces] the beautiful complexity of the world down,” said Karau.

Alexander MacKay, Class of 2019, took Design and Innovation in his first J-term. He remembers the three weeks as an intense experience full of late nights and frantic prototyping. This past term he took on the role of assistant to the course, observing the changes from a mentorship position.

“I think there have been substantial improvements and that the focus of the course has changed from... an emphasis on rapid prototyping and creation of a product to instead the generation of a meaningful idea and also finding an elegant solution to that idea,” said MacKay.

The Design and Innovation class’ final projects are currently on display in A5. Arranged neatly, the projects tell a story of hard work and creative thought. Many of the projects tackle important global issues, proposing innovative solutions that may not be perfect but are certainly original.

“I was impressed by people who were willing to adapt their ideas, change their focus, but also to push themselves further within that field,” said MacKay about the efforts of the 2019 Design and Innovation class.

“[Students] really did want to work on something meaningful and kind of pushed themselves to do so.”

Karau hopes the course encourages students to graduate ready to solve meaningful problems, explaining that “most engineers are really good at solving other people's problems, but when you ask them what do you wanna work on or what's worth working on, they kind of blink a couple of times and glaze over their eyes and say I don't know.”

With its influential history and infamous status among NYUAD students, the future of the course now rests on engineering students asking the right kinds of questions and coming up with answers that matter.