The vocational nature of design education requires students to be exposed to tools and methods that have been validated through use by practitioners during professional practice. However, there is also an opportunity and a need for academic research to be more pro-active in both the evaluation of emerging tools and development of new resources. This paper discusses two case studies in which PhD research was used to inform educational practice in industrial design education. The first case study, supported by Hewlett Packard USA, evaluated the use of the Tablet PC as a mobile design studio that could integrate sketching with other core design activities. The second, supported by the Industrial Designers Society of America, developed a compact, card-based tool (iD Cards) to support understanding and communication in the use of design representations during new product development. The paper discusses the methods used in the research and identifies the positive contribution to student learning.