The Convergence Design Lab creates, conducts, and facilitates a wide variety of workshops and outreach programs with our extended partners such as museums, university programs, and libraries.
We have collaborated with Lafayette Indiana's Imagination Station, Rochester New York's The Strong Museum of Play, Purdue University's GERI and others around the country.
We help children learn science and engineering through designing, making and playing with toys. Participants have both a fun and engaging way to learn engineering concepts and ideas through experiential activities.
Our workshops usually incorporate various forms of prototyping and design, including sketching, by combining everyday materials with creations made on 3D printers and laser cutters.
Seminar: Augmenting Humans in Design Fabrication, Robotics, and Workflows Through Spatially Aware Interfaces
Karthik Ramani Donald W. Feddersen Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University November 6, 2020 1PM – 2PM (CDT) Seminar will be presented via Zoom (https://auburn.zoom.us/j/4465550646) Augmenting Humans in Design...
Seminar: Augmenting Humans in Design Fabrication, Robotics, and Workflows Through Spatially Aware Interfaces
Karthik Ramani Donald W. Feddersen Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Purdue University Friday, October 16, 2020 - 1:30pm to 3:00pm Seminar will be presented via Zoom Augmenting Humans in Design Fabrication, Robotics, and Workflows...
Sketch Making for Design Thinking
The C-Design Lab has made course material from ME553 available to the world. Have you ever wanted to take your ideas and communicate them visually? Do you have an idea you want to iterate on? Our Sketch Making for Design Thinking series of videos...
C Design Lab at the Greater Lafayette Mini Maker Faire 2019
One more year the C-Design Lab is part of the Greater Lafayette Mini Maker Fair, an event that attracts hundreds of children and makers. This year, people were able to have a feeling of design methods, fabrication techniques, and digital...
GERI 2018 Summer Workshops
STAR I Workshop Over the summer of 2018, the C Design Lab conducted a two-week Toy...
4-H Camp teams and coaches of the Design Workshop Hosted by C Design lab
4-H Camp teams and coached of the Design Workshop Hosted by C Design lab on 14th, 15th and 16th of June, 2017.
Prof. Karthik Ramani gave keynote talk in Cyberlearning 2017
Toy Design Workshops
We want children to learn through experience. They need to prototype to think. Authentic and active learning connects to their lives and provides a strong foundation in creativity. Furthermore engineering design through design, build and play...
Ziro goes to The Bier Brewery
Ziro is going to The Bier Brewery on May 24th, Tuesday to meet with beer enthusiasts. Pint of Science is an outreach organization that brings scientists behind science stories together with the local people. You can find detailed information here....
Ziro meets with children at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis
Ziro continues to come together with kids and hobbyists all around Purdue. On May 23th our team from C Design Lab met with children at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis.Â
Science and Engineering: Heat, Light and Power
Mechanical Engineering Professors Amy Marconet, Amy Marconnet, Liang Pan and Kejie Zhao developed a hands-on workshop on heat, light and power. C Design labs helped facilitate the workshop through Imagination Station. Learning science hands-on...
Toy Design Lab in Mechanical Engineering: GERI 2015 Summer Outreach Program
Ever wonder how “funology†(fun and play value) and basic physics are combined in toy design? Discover how simple toys work and, with a toy design team of fellow students, engage your imaginations as you create sketches of potential toys. Learn...
Big plans for Imagination Station
Big plans for Imagination Station From Dylan Peers McCoy  7:42 p.m. EDT May 2, 2015 http://www.jconline.com/ Children discover the joy and possibilities of engineering, not only through math class but also by building things. That’s...
LSAMP Program at 2014
Prof. Karthik Ramani and his team conducted a toy design workshop as part of the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation program (LSAMP) at Purdue. The workshop was conducted for 7th and 8th grade students from the Murray Academy and Park...
Lafayette Christian School Visit
A workshop was organized in collaboration with the Lafayette Christian School where middle-school students were introduced to state-of-the-art design and manufacturing technology at Purdue University. The idea behind this workshops was to provide a...
Toy Makers Fair – December 5th 2013
This course combines CAD techniques and strategies with design in teams. ME444 in its new form combines the right balance of hands-on-design in the lecture/workshops with the CAD skills learnt in the labs. Students design toys using...
Design Lab – October 22nd, 2013
The C Design lab offers the toy design course (ME444) that has been designed and re-designed with changes in design software, better understanding of processes and design learning, and prototyping techniques. It was first offered in the early...
First Robotics
The C-Design Lab conducted a hands-on mid-air shape modeling session as a part of the Robotics Workshops conducted by the FIRST Forum. Middle school students participated in creative design activities through hands-on experience with zPots - a...
Design Workshop, September 2013
The C Design lab offers formal and informal workshops on sketch inhibition and sketching for engineers. Here the presentation is a formal sketch workshop done in one of the toy design classes. These workshops start from the simple mechanics of...
MakerFaire Bay Area
The C-Design Lab at the MakerFaire (Bay Area), an event that attracts thousands of individuals from different parts of the United States. In collaboration with ZeroUI, we showcased the lab's research on gesture based virtual pottery, clay modeling,...
Franklin Township Middle School Outreach – February 23rd, 2013
The workshop was part of an "introduction to engineering" tour conducted for Franklin Township Middle School on Friday, April 26, 2013. Around 50 students attended, and on the design leg of their tour, were introduced to sketching, aspects of toy...
Makers’ Faire 2012
In 2012, our lab represented Purdue for the first time at the annual Makers' Faire in San Mateo, California. We taught sketching workshops for well over 200 people over 2 days.
NERF Blaster Dissections
In 2012, we were invited to lead a workshop in ME 297 (How Stuff Works) for NERF blasters. We brought blasters for the students to take apart. After the students took the blasters apart, they created a function tree to describe how it works. ...
Sketching Workshop for College Mentors for Kids
In 2011, we were asked to teach kids about what it means to be an engineer and have some engineering activity. We talked to the kids about what engineers are and how they use sketching to do their work. They loved it. [huge_it_gallery...