The present paper aims to describe the educational pilot project organized within the master’s degree in Advance and Sustainable Design of the University of Florence (Italy) during the fall semester in A.Y. 23/24, with the participation of the Romanian Cluster Proeco-CBRNE and the Romanian National Institute for Research & Development in Chemistry and Petrochemistry. The experience challenged students in designing innovative and high technological solutions for the emergency scenario adopting a user centered design methodology, collaborating with the final users.

The emergency context is a very complex and unpredictable scenario, and it is usually the domain of specialized technical disciplines and bound by strict international standards. The design discipline could be a fundamental and strategic element in supporting and enhancing the effectiveness of more technical disciplines, but its value is still underrated in such fields. Its strategic role was demonstrated and highlighted especially during the H2020 Search and Rescue project (Emerging Technologies for the Early Location of Entrapped Victims under Collapsed Structures and Advanced Wearables for Risk Assessment and First Responders Safety in SAR Operations, Grant Agreement ID: 882897) in which the research teams of UNIFI and PROECO worked together. In addition the project underlined how the direct involvement of end users in all phases of the design process, using a participatory approach, allows to develop technically advanced solutions while simultaneously considering the psychophysical well-being of the rescuers even while designing standardized products. The experience enabled stakeholders and end users to explore and assess a design methodology based on the human-centered design (HCD) approach, infrequently observed in other scientific researches pertaining to this field. Moreover, it allowed to foster an active dialogue among the design community, the rescue organizations, and industrial entities, identifying products and processes gaps that could easily be improved implementing the HCD approach, and opening the possibility of development to new projects.

Lastly the experience has highlighted the necessity to educate professional figures, highly specialized, able to manage design processes for advanced and technological products for complex and changing scenarios such as emergencies, and capable to work closely with industry stakeholders.

Starting from these considerations and needs, the presented educational pilot project was organized within the Integrated Communication Design Lab with the active involvement of the international specialized partners. During the activity, students were guided to design innovative and high technological solutions for the CBRNE scenario, taking into high consideration the specific users’ needs and behaviors. For this reason several coworking activities were organized with the end users, ensuring their participation during all the design process.

The experimentation aims to promote a learning methodology that could be applied to the design courses that can improve the collaboration between different international academic institutes, companies and no profit organizations.The pilot project represents a real challenge in the public academic Italian scenario, able to open an international debate on the new approaches and challenges of public design education and about the role that design discipline should have in relation to the future society.

Keywords: Codesign, emergency, design degree, public university, no-profit organization.