The Product Design and Development (PDD) textbook is suitable for several class settings, including the following:
- An interdisciplinary, project-based course on design and development in which many of the class sessions correspond to a PDD chapter. Such courses are often offered jointly by engineering, management, and/or industrial design programs. In this setting PDD would most likely be used in its entirety.
- A "capstone" engineering design course in which the instructor wishes to give the students a flavor for the activities involved in the industrial practice of product design and development. In this setting, some instructors would use PDD in its entirety, while others would use selected chapters of the book in conjunction with a more traditional engineering design text like Dieter’s Engineering Design: A Materials and Processing Approach (McGraw-Hill, 1991).
- A traditional "new products" course in a management school, in which the instructor wishes to expose the students to some of the interdisciplinary issues in product development, such as product planning, customer needs, setting specifications, concept testing, industrial design, and design for manufacturing. Some of these courses would use the majority of the chapters of the book, while others might only use a few chapters.
- A business school course on technology, manufacturing, and/or operations management in which the instructor wishes to cover a few product development issues. The chapters on product planning, industrial design, design for manufacturing, and product architecture are most likely to be important in such courses.
- An industrial design course on product development. Ideally such a course would be conducted in collaboration with an engineering program (as described above); however several ID departments use PDD to expose their students to the broader product development process and how industrial design fits into a collaborative environment. ID students would likely benefit from all of the book chapters, perhaps with the exception of the chapter on industrial design itself.