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Northwestern University

Sponsoring Crucial Capstone Projects

Director Jim Wicks explains how mpd² students benefit from collaborating on client-sponsored projects.

Jun 30, 2026

The primary goal of Northwestern Engineering's Master of Product Design and Development Management (mpd²) program is to prepare students with the education, experience, and skills to successfully lead the product development function across an organization. 

An update to this year's Capstone project provided students with more direct preparation than ever before.  

Capstone is a three-quarter culminating opportunity for students to take what they learn in a classroom and apply it to a product or service. Historically, part of the process was to collaborate as teams to create a product or service of their choice from zero to one. Starting this year, students were teamed up on client-sponsored projects instead.  

Each student team was assigned a prompt from one of five sponsors:  

 

mpd² director Jim Wicks discussed the value of client-sponsored projects and how the program's Capstone prepares students for realities they'll face in the workplace. 

How do students benefit from having sponsored Capstone projects? 

It's really good for the students to have access to a real-world product. Greenfield entrepreneurial projects are great, but they're really hard to do well within three quarters as a newly formed team. Working with a sponsor allows our students to learn the process a bit more, and it's probably closer to reality of what they'll be experiencing in their professional careers as they evolve as product leaders. 

What's valuable about a sponsor coming in with a product and a problem is that there is context and it's relevant. It's also at what we call 'the right altitude,' where it's grounded enough for them to dig into specific and actionable research, yet open-ended enough for them to follow the path they believe has the most potential. 

It's also great to be interacting with other professionals. It's an excellent way to start to build their network. It also creates an opportunity for them to do a project in an industry they’re not experienced with. Maybe the pace is a little bit different. Maybe there's a little more risk aversion. It gives them the opportunity to explore a different domain and learn and understand different ways to do things that they otherwise would not have access to. 

How is the Capstone curriculum structured? 

During the first quarter, Helen von den Steinen teaches our Customer Driven Opportunities course that is all about design research. Students explore their sponsor's prompt and the problem, get to a clear value proposition, identify a target consumer, understand why this problem's important to them, and find a potential opportunity space to solve it. They do that through primary and secondary research. 

In the next quarter, Josh Campbell and I teach Creativity and Understanding through Design Sprints, where students go from product definition to product design and get to a robust prototype of their solution. We start to explore business viability and technical components, but it's really heavy on prototyping. The class is all about helping the students get comfortable making things to further understand the problem and the solution.  

In the third quarter, students take Business Model Design with John Renaldi. That quarter is all about iteratively understanding the business model, testing it, developing marketing channels, messaging, and their brand, all while continuing to progress on the design of the product. 

How are students assigned their sponsor? 

What we try to do, and I think we're reasonably successful, is we work with the students. They complete a CliftonStrengths assessment, go through speed networking, and answer a workstyle survey so that we can understand their interests, and then we put them on teams. Part of forming those teams has to do with what kind of capstone projects they're interested in. With this range of products, we're able to match them really well on a team with similar interests. 

We know through experience that teams really come together the best if they're involved in a project that everybody is interested in. We all know if you're not really interested in your work, it's much more difficult to excel, but it's also more difficult for other people to work with you. With this range of offerings, we're able to ensure students are working with a sponsor and on a project that appeals to them. 

Capstone teams also have alumni mentors. How do students interact with their mentors, and how are mentors' roles different from the sponsor representative? 

Students meet with their sponsors every month or so, but it's not a weekly thing. Our alumni mentors serve as trusted sources who are available to our students to help work through challenges, in addition, of course, to the faculty. 

You spoke about the value of sponsored projects, but from a broader perspective, why are these Capstone projects so beneficial for students? 

I think there are three types of learning that we have in the program. Most programs only have two, and some only have one. The first is content delivery—information being imparted to the student. And sure, they learn from that. But how much of that information really sticks?  

What's really important then, and what we do here, is take that content delivered to students and turn it into something that's activity-based. All of our classes have an opportunity for students to learn from our faculty and then apply that knowledge and test it out through class activities and projects. That's the second type. 

The third learning component that really is important to us, follows our mantra of what you learn on Friday, you can apply it on Monday. That means students take these concepts and they can apply them to their work in the professional world. For many of our students, that's what they do, and that's what leads to promotions and work above their role and responsibilities. They're applying new knowledge and they feel empowered to do so.   

For people who aren't currently in a role or aren't able to do that on the professional side, one of the best ways to practice what they are learning is with a long-term project like their Capstone. The learning becomes super tangible and it gets ingrained in you because you're continuing to explore it. 

Often with product development, and especially with design, it all looks really simple when you lay it out on a Figma board. But when you start synthesizing and go from research to design, you start to realize how ambiguous the process can be. There is a degree of trial and error, but it has to be guided and purposeful trial and error. The Capstone gives you that in a safe environment where you have teammates and faculty there to help you through it. 

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