This editorial represents a brief overview of design education in China, and then it introduces Shandong University of Art & Design (SUAD). It contains three parts. The first section describes the ...development of design education in China and the current situation of College Entrance Examination for design students. The second section introduces SUAD from aspects of its location, the features of design teaching and learning, and design-related actives and achievements. The last part predicts the future of design education in China.
This editorial represents a brief overview of design education in China, and then it introduces Shandong University of Art & Design (SUAD). It contains three parts. The first section describes the ...development of design education in China and the current situation of College Entrance Examination for design students. The second section introduces SUAD from aspects of its location, the features of design teaching and learning, and design-related actives and achievements. The last part predicts the future of design education in China.
Purpose Algorithmic and computational thinking are necessary skills for designers in an increasingly digital world. Parametric design, a method to construct designs based on algorithmic logic and ...rules, has become widely used in architecture practice and incorporated in the curricula of architecture schools. However, there are few studies proposing strategies for teaching parametric design into architecture students, tackling software literacy while promoting the development of algorithmic thinking. Design/methodology/approach A descriptive study and a prescriptive study are conducted. The descriptive study reviews the literature on parametric design education. The prescriptive study is centered on proposing the incomplete recipe as instructional material and a new approach to teaching parametric design. Findings The literature on parametric design education has mostly focused on curricular discussions, descriptions of case studies or studio-long approaches; day-to-day instructional methods, however, are rarely discussed. A pedagogical strategy to teach parametric design is introduced: the incomplete recipe. The instructional method proposed provides students with incomplete recipes for parametric scripts that are increasingly pared down as the students become expert users. Originality/value The article contributes to the existing literature by proposing the incomplete recipe as a strategy for teaching parametric design. The recipe as a pedagogical tool provides a means for both software skill acquisition and the development of algorithmic thinking.
Prototypes are essential tools in product design processes, but are often underutilized by novice designers. To help novice designers use prototypes more effectively, we must first determine how they ...currently use prototypes. In this paper, we describe how novice designers conceptualized prototypes and reported using them throughout a design project, and we compare reported prototyping use to prototyping best practices. We found that some of the reported prototyping practices by novice designers, such as using inexpensive prototypes early and using prototypes to define user requirements, occurred infrequently and lacked intentionality. Participants' initial descriptions of prototypes were less sophisticated than how they later described using them, and only upon prompted reflection did participants recognize more specific benefits of using prototypes.
•Novice designers' prototyping conceptions were less sophisticated than their reported use.•Many prototyping behaviors reflected literature-based best practices.•Several prototyping behaviors occurred at low frequency and lacked intentionality.
Engineering design processes are often defined as beginning with a problem and diverging to generate possible solutions; however, design processes can start with a newly developed technological ...solution, followed by a divergent search for potential problem applications it can solve, termed 'solution mapping'. Building on previous research where engineering practitioners described their successful strategies for solution mapping, we created a tool to support solution mapping and tested its impact with engineering students. In a single session, graduate and advanced undergraduate engineering students were presented with a novel technology and worked to identify potential problem applications for it. Comparing students using the Solution Mapping Design Tool to two control groups, more diverse problem applications were produced when using the tool. Considering diverse options is an important feature of design processes shown to promote creativity and innovation. With this successful proof of concept, future work on solution mapping will identify how to support engineers seeking problem applications by making use of new technologies.
For design education, although different international design organizations have developed design thinking models (DTM), these DTMs mainly focus on improving innovation but ignore the actual demands ...of users. This paper proposes a consumer-oriented DTM to implement innovation and evaluation based on accurately grasping users' demands. The consumer-oriented DTM consists of three phases, namely preparation, creation and evaluation. In the preparation phase, the evaluation grid method is used to obtain a three-layer demand chart from skilled users; this chart is then used to design questionnaires to get charm factors. In the creation phase, the concrete charm factors are taken as the design objectives to guide the innovative design. Several methods are integrated, including the objectives tree method, function analysis method, and finite structure method, to obtain a group of alternatives. In the evaluation phase, the original evaluation items are taken as the evaluation criteria, and then the best solution is selected. The highchair is considered a design case to elaborate on how students use the consumer-oriented DTM to carry out design practice. The final results verify that the new DTM applies to classroom teaching, which improves the commercialization of design concepts and cultivates students' ability to communicate with others.
At its heart, design is a studio-based discipline, which makes it difficult for design educators to adopt technology-driven changes into an online teaching and learning environment. Globally, few ...universities offer online undergraduate degree design courses, despite an overall growth in online higher degree curricula. Anecdotal evidence and limited research studies exploring the design educators’ view lament the potential loss of direct interactions between educator and design students in an online learning environment making it impossible to offer design education online. However, the attitude of design students towards online learning is largely underexplored. Given that today’s design students are considered tech-savvy, and there is a growing student demand for flexible study options, it would seem that design students would embrace online delivery options. The aim of this study is to explore the perception of undergraduate design students towards the idea of studying design online and whether or not blended learning could provide a transitional middle ground to a fully online design course. This study also touches on any student reservations about online delivery and identifies the barriers to study design online.
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