The Effect of Educational Background On Designers' Viewpoints

Abstract

In the product design area, much attention has been given to new product development which creates superior products through integrating and coordinating tasks. Solving product problems in new product development are influenced by industrial design and engineering design. The activities of these two areas are closely linked. Thus, the cooperation between industrial design majors and engineering design majors is important. However, it is known that such cooperation is quite difficult. There could be many reasons for this. I thought educational background could play an important role in this problem. In this research, I tried to find out how the difference in education, between industrial design and engineering design students, influences their viewpoint. First, suitable products, to be used in the experiments, were selected. After that, problems with the products were identified. Then, identified problems were prioritized and solved. Finally, the focus group interview evaluation was performed based on the previous problem solving results. The results of this study showed that there was a difference in viewpoint between these two groups. I found the convergent research design method, which allows for investigators to understand phenomena by qualitative analysis that were not disclosed by quantitative analysis was very effective. Through this process, I found out that viewpoints of the industrial major students were user-oriented while those of the engineering major students were product-oriented. Furthermore, I found out that the industrial design group’s main viewpoints expand to users and environment-centered whereas the engineering design group’s viewpoints were focused on product and realization-centered. These different viewpoints were maintained continuously in each group during the problem solving process. The same tendency was noticed when they identified, solved and evaluated problems. This proves clearly that educational background influences designers’ viewpoints. From the focus group interview, I found that if similar approaches were made to solve the problems, mutual understanding and cooperation would be easier. Based on this evidence, a way to minimize mutual conflict could be found through the analysis of the positive aspects of each other.