Abstract

Design students face certain learning problems and difficulties as they explore the design problems space. The purpose of this study is to understand those learning problems and the resources that undergraduate industrial design students need in studio courses. To collect the data, a questionnaire was designed according to the preliminary studies. A total of 334 students from 4 Taiwanese universities participated in the survey. The results demonstrated that the most difficult design tasks for students included concept generation, design presentation and design decision. The main problems that the students experienced included the cost issue in design presentation, time pressure in design documentation, inspiration in concept generation, digital modelling in design presentation and vertical (deep) thinking in concept generation. The causes of these problems were personal issues, resources and interactions with instructors and peers. The learning resources that the students used to solve their learning problems fell into four categories: people, object, method and environment. The information provided in this study can deepen the understanding of the learning process of students and provide a reference for teaching planning and the setting of the learning resources in design education.

Keywords

learning problems, learning resources, design education

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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Jun 9th, 9:00 AM

Learning problems and resources usage of undergraduate industrial design students in studio courses

Design students face certain learning problems and difficulties as they explore the design problems space. The purpose of this study is to understand those learning problems and the resources that undergraduate industrial design students need in studio courses. To collect the data, a questionnaire was designed according to the preliminary studies. A total of 334 students from 4 Taiwanese universities participated in the survey. The results demonstrated that the most difficult design tasks for students included concept generation, design presentation and design decision. The main problems that the students experienced included the cost issue in design presentation, time pressure in design documentation, inspiration in concept generation, digital modelling in design presentation and vertical (deep) thinking in concept generation. The causes of these problems were personal issues, resources and interactions with instructors and peers. The learning resources that the students used to solve their learning problems fell into four categories: people, object, method and environment. The information provided in this study can deepen the understanding of the learning process of students and provide a reference for teaching planning and the setting of the learning resources in design education.

 

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