I used to Engineer… but now I Design

A popular offering in engineering curricula at universities are practical classes or projects that enable students to apply theoretical knowledge gained in lectures on concrete practical examples. Practical projects in the area of healthcare, in particular, defined as university-industry collaborations provide the potential of being very beneficial especially in undergraduate education: in such realistic project settings, students can experience real-life engineering challenges and achieve learning objectives that go beyond typical learning objectives of practical assignments during classes or even practical projects defined by their professors. However, such collaborative projects have to be curated and planned carefully and also come with various challenges. In this article, authors share their experiences about how they weave in methods from design education to a mechanical engineering module. These experiences comprise objectives, benefits, challenges and lessons learned both from an educational viewpoint (i.e., students), teaching and research viewpoint (supervisors), and industry viewpoint (problem statement owners). The experiences summarized in this article could serve as motivation and valuable information for other universities and industry companies intending to plan and organize collaborative projects of this kind.