Rethinking digital product development and user experience practices in industrial design education

Date

2023-9-4

Author

Hatunoğlu, Doğan Can

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Recent developments have expanded the context of industrial design in many areas, and contemporary design fields have emerged incorporating digital approaches. Interaction design, user interface (UI), user experience (UX), and service design are among the prominent fields with increasing market interest and value. Nowadays, many industrial designers are oriented towards these fields. However, since their foundations consist of various disciplines (e.g., computer science, psychology, sociology) working in cooperation in the market rather than academia, they have an interdisciplinary structure with their own design processes, tools, and methods. While there are many similarities between industrial design and digital product development, there also are specific skills and knowledge that industrial designers do not encounter during formal education. This research explores the gap between industrial design education and UX professions. In the data collection phase, the digital product development process, particularly its UX implementations in industrial design education, is explored through the industrial design graduation projects at METU Department of Industrial Design. Two online surveys with industrial design students, visual content analysis of graduation project submissions of 24 students, and 35 semi-structured interviews with students, academics, and UX professionals were carried out. The research findings offer three main conclusions regarding (1) directions for digital product development and UX practices in industrial design education, (2) transformation of digital product development from industrial design education to UX professions, and (3) qualifications for industrial designers on becoming UX professionals.

Subject Keywords

Industrial design education, Digital product development, User experience (UX) methodology, Graduation projects, University-industry collaboration

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/105420

Collections

Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis