When Design Meets Engineering, Students Solve the Right Problems

For Sarah Rottenberg, Executive Director of the Integrated Product Design Program (IPD) at Penn Engineering and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Weitzman School of Design, innovation does not begin with solutions, it begins with asking better questions.

IPD is a Penn Engineering master’s program that brings together design, business and engineering. It offers two degrees: the Master of Integrated Product Design (M:IPD) and the Master of Science in Engineering in Integrated Product Design (MSE:IPD). A Certificate in Integrated Product Design is offered for students who are pursuing other graduate degrees at Penn.

In IPD 5520: Problem Framing, which Rottenberg (who also holds a secondary appointment in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics in Penn Engineering) co-teaches with Mikael Avery, Senior Lecturer at the Weitzman School of Design, students are taught to rethink the earliest stage of design: understanding the problem itself. The result is a studio course where ambiguity isn’t avoided, it is essential.

Designing the “Why” Before the “What”

For more than a decade, IPD 5520 has paired student teams with industry clients to tackle complex, human-centered challenges. The goal isn’t to rush toward solutions, but to slow down and ask deeper questions.

“Identifying research insights to ground ideas is genuinely hard,” says Rottenberg. “Coming into a new domain and generating ideas that are both novel and implementable takes real skill and time. We are giving our students a head start so they know how to approach these problems when they graduate and forge their own career paths.”

Students learn to conduct user interviews, analyze systems and test assumptions in real-world settings, mirroring the early phases of professional product design. Just as importantly, they learn to navigate uncertainty.

Rottenberg invites other experts within Penn Engineering to coach students. Here, Ocek Ecke, Director of Graduate Student Programming and Retention, gives a talk on presentation skills.

In spring 2026, student teams worked with many different clients, including Penn Live Arts (PLA) and Amtrak.

For Penn Live Arts, students explored how to improve the full experience of attending a live performance for patrons with physical disabilities, sensory sensitivities and neurological differences. Their work spanned everything from ticketing and communication to arrival, seating and the performance itself, all grounded in direct conversations with patrons and staff.

For Amtrak, the challenge was in moments of disruption. When trains are delayed, passengers often face confusion about what to do next. Students mapped the complex ecosystem of rail partners and transit systems along the Northeast Corridor, identifying ways to help travelers better understand their options and continue their journeys with confidence.

Rather than proposing entirely new products, both teams focused on making existing systems work better, an approach that reflects the constraints of real-world design. Throughout the course, student-derived solutions are shared with the clients and some are even implemented.

“Accessibility is a value we are very dedicated to pursuing as Penn Live Arts grows as an organization, and we were thrilled to partner with the IPD program to explore pathways for more accessible patron experiences,” says Leah Falk, a Penn Live Arts staff member. “The students were great listeners, using many different modes to understand the ways patrons and staff interact with different processes, including ticketing, seating and wayfinding. Beyond the focused recommendations the team offered, this partnership gave PLA a chance to work with a Penn course and group of students over an extended period, an experience we hope to replicate in the future.”

Here, two IPD students, Rives Matson and Ashni Zaverchand, are prototyping a sleeve designed to measure muscle movement for patients with OCD as part of a client project working with the Pesaran Lab.

Learning Across Disciplines To Make an Impact

IPD’s multidisciplinary structure brings together students from engineering, design and business backgrounds. This intentional mix helps students work together and tackle problems that don’t fit neatly into one field.

“Students have to learn how to think together, not just work alongside each other,” says Rottenberg. “They’re getting up to speed in domains they may know nothing about, and building a case for ideas that actually resonate with a client.”

That collaboration is central to the course experience and to the careers students are preparing for.

“Working with a client directly gave us a strong understanding of what it’s like to solve problems with solutions that can have a widespread impact,” says Max Hazlin, an M:IPD student on the Amtrak team. “Amtrak gave us the freedom to explore and research before experimenting with our output, and encouraged us to meet with teams across the organization and challenge existing procedures. It was fascinating to see how so many moving parts work together. Combining design and engineering helped us not only imagine a solution, but think through how it could actually be implemented. In the end, we were very proud of what we accomplished in such a compressed timeframe.”

Over just a few months, students move from initial research to actionable design directions, culminating in final presentations delivered directly to their clients.

For Rottenberg, one of the most rewarding aspects is seeing how quickly students can make meaningful contributions.

“Constraints often push students toward more creative solutions,” she says. “And seeing them build relationships with each other and with clients and produce work that actually matters is incredibly exciting.”

“I did not previously have experience with accessibility services or many personal connections with people in the disability community, so I was challenged to reflect on my assumptions and conduct thorough user research in order to understand people’s lived experiences and design a solution that would best fit their needs,” says Beatrice Tam, an MSE:IPD student working on the Penn Live Arts project. “I think one of the biggest successes of our project was finding a solution that not only improves the accessible experience for Penn Live Arts patrons that already use accessibility services, but also benefits other patrons as well as the performers and staff.”

A Classroom That Extends Beyond Campus

IPD 5520 directly prepares students for industry. Through hands-on collaboration, students gain experience navigating real organizational constraints, communicating across stakeholders and delivering insights that can be implemented.

The course also opens the door for future partnerships.

“We’d love to hear from anyone — inside Penn or beyond — who has a project students could help with,” says Rottenberg. “The key is that it’s a real problem with real stakes. That’s when students do their best work.”

Learn more about the IPD Program here and the IPD 5520 course here.