PhD Research Learning in Product Architecture Design

The field of design research has been expanding into a wide diverse range of multidisciplinary topics. It takes substantial time for young researchers to attain a cumulative overview of state of the art on ever more complex methodologies. Teaching doctoral candidates in summer schools is an approach being taken by the design society to support them attaining an immersed understanding of a chosen research field as well as to help them formulate their own line of research. The aim for a new researcher is to form exchanges and collaborations with other researchers. The 'International Summer School on Product Architecture Design - PAD 2018' was such an effort, where 17 international PhD researchers and three international faculties met for a week and explored research in product architecture through hands-on exercises. We surveyed the researchers for effectiveness of the summer school and found that structure and concept of the summer school was effective for providing a background baseline of state of the art. We found there was a significant but less impact on individual participant´s research. We have yet to understand if the creation of collaborations among participants will occur.