Madeleine K. Wieser

Where Is Product Design Education Headed? is an international talk series initiated by designer and educator Madeleine K. Wieser as part of her role as Assistant Professor in Product Design at Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet). Taking place during design weeks across Europe, each edition brings together voices from design practice, industry and academia to explore how product design education can respond to a changing profession. Each conversation is rooted in its local design context while bringing it into dialogue with international perspectives. Since its launch at Designer’s Saturday in Oslo in 2025, the series has travelled to Vienna, Barcelona, Eindhoven, Milan and Copenhagen. Now, for its seventh edition, the series arrives in Berlin as part of Currents Agenda.

The panel will bring together design educators and take the current budget cuts and structural changes affecting German design universities as its starting point, while placing this situation in dialogue with perspectives from other European educational contexts. The discussion will ask: What happens when design programmes come under increasing economic and political pressure, and how can universities sustain product design education that allows for experimentation and critical reflection while remaining closely connected to professional practice and responsive to future challenges?

Madeleine K. Wieser is a Norwegian-Austrian product designer and educator. She runs an independent design practice focused on furniture and everyday objects alongside her role as Assistant Professor in Product Design at Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet). As part of this role, she initiated and curates the international talk series Where Is Product Design Education Headed?