Teaching entrepreneurship to design students: a cool project

I was recently invited by Mr. Marco Sosa (author of the Al Bidiya mosque book I review here) to "act" the part of a client for his ART 385 Interior Design Studio II - today was the initial client meeting. Marco mentioned he is going to start a blog of the project and I asked the young ladies today if I could blog about it - they agreed!

First, the space, is an empty room in the female side of the campus in the "Promenade" - really a great canvas for the young women to be innovative and inventive with.

"Future office space" for fictitious boutique consulting firm

The students mapped it out earlier and then came to meet me and Dr. Victor - the clients. Of course, I came up with a new boutique consulting firm with a client base for training and consultation, from China and Canada wanting to do business in the Emirates and Emirati clients wanting to do business in our respective countries.

The initial meeting was to meet with us, understand our needs and understand who we are. Mr. Marco called it a bit like playing as a "private detective" or an archaeologist discovering needs - because clients (and I was such a good example of this) often don't really know what they want until they see it!

Their questions were amazing and I tried to speak using idioms and purposely did not describe what a "design workshop" was and kept on coming up with new information. It was fun and it made me realize I do miss teaching the girls a lot!

Marco and I and the interior designers 

So, many of them have now followed me on twitter and have my email to ask further questions - really this is such an exciting project. It will also give them first hand experience dealing with a "client" or "clients" rather. True learning through doing... 

I will keep you updated of course! I think the hardest part will be choosing the winning design! I already know I will be blown away by their work!