Abstract
China is passing through a challenging transition: the labour-force expansion and surging investment that propelled three decades of growth are now weakening. Australia is experiencing similar issues. In Australia the economy over this same period has survived on mainly mining of natural resources mostly exported to China. This cannot be sustained and a push from a resource economy to a knowledge economy needs to start. This study goes into detail about perceived issues associated with industrial design programs at a university level in both China and Australia. It then consists of a pilot survey targeted at Chinese and Australian industrial design students and recent graduates. This has been done to better understand the mindsets and opinion of the next generation of industrial designers, with an aim to better address issues that arise for government, universities and industry.
Keywords
Industrial design, China, Australia, stereotypes
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2016.321
Citation
Kuys, B., and Zhang, W. (2016) Elucidating perceptions of Australian and Chinese industrial design from the next generation of industrial designers, in Lloyd, P. and Bohemia, E. (eds.), Future Focused Thinking - DRS International Conference 2016, 27 - 30 June, Brighton, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2016.321
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Elucidating perceptions of Australian and Chinese industrial design from the next generation of industrial designers
China is passing through a challenging transition: the labour-force expansion and surging investment that propelled three decades of growth are now weakening. Australia is experiencing similar issues. In Australia the economy over this same period has survived on mainly mining of natural resources mostly exported to China. This cannot be sustained and a push from a resource economy to a knowledge economy needs to start. This study goes into detail about perceived issues associated with industrial design programs at a university level in both China and Australia. It then consists of a pilot survey targeted at Chinese and Australian industrial design students and recent graduates. This has been done to better understand the mindsets and opinion of the next generation of industrial designers, with an aim to better address issues that arise for government, universities and industry.