Design model making and prototyping is a valued part of many industries, including product and packaging design, architecture, transportation, etc. It plays an important role in developing students to visualise their 3D work, paying attention to detail on how parts and processes fit together to visualise and communicate their design solutions. A case study was conducted with 15 undergraduate industrial design students. Subsequent to this exercise, in the previous semester, students did sketch work and had not experienced hands-on model making, which presented itself as a challenge. At the beginning of the product design course, a questionnaire was administered and a second questionnaire administered after the hands-on experiments. On a weekly basis, students experimented with new material to visualise their models up to the final model. During the second half of the semester, students modelled components for a chair. In the article, the authors discuss hands-on model making experimentation with industrial design students at the University of Botswana, using materials, such as styrofoam, cardboard and cloth. The results show that students' confidence in model making can be greatly enhanced by exposing them to a multi-stage model making processes, i.e. from sketch modelling to prototype modelling. The skills students have acquired in this course will assist them in their future careers.

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