Keywords

1 Introduction

1.1 Connected Objects as a Considerable Design Topic

The connected objects, also named as smart devices or intelligent products, are objects for personal daily use. Nowadays, we habitually use smartphones to realize social interactions, control appliances at a distance and get information; we employ smart bracelets to monitor our physical health and other smart products to satisfy our needs, to access remote functions and personalized services. These devices have opened a new industrial product field, and they gradually become a daily necessity, modifying the ways we interact with environments, context and people. They are enabling our life into a new age by the application of the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Information Communications Technology (ICT). Undeniably, the smart objects are changing our surroundings in different directions, showing their value in social, economic and innovation sense [1].

By some reference definitions, connected products are material solutions embedded with processors, sensors, software and connectivity that allow data to be exchanged between the product and its environment, manufacturer, operator/user, and with other products and systems [2]. The introduction of connected objects refers to the development of telecom applications; they provide the touch-points of services through the web and the connection with other connected objects [3].

In 2017, Gartner, Inc. forecasted that 8.4 billion connected objects will be in use worldwide in 2017, and will reach 20.4 billion by 2020. Total spending on endpoints and services were supposed to reach almost $2 trillion in 2017. Regionally, Greater China, North America and Western Europe are driving the use of connected things, and the three regions together represent 67% of the overall IoT installed base in 2017 [4].

By another Chinese report by Analysys.cn, the smart object’s market of China reached $52.3 billion in 2016 and was expected to reach $63.1 billion by 2017. It is estimated that by 2019, this market will reach the scale of $85.4 billion [5], (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.
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Chinese smart objects market situation of 2014–2016 and forecast for 2017–2019

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In the last decades, China faced a tremendous increase of its production capabilities in several different industrial fields of application and, notably, in the domain of material products including features based on electronics technologies. The analysis of market and crowd-funding platforms shows a flourish of new objects exploiting the properties due to connectivity with the web, which have the potentials to innovate the way of use of traditional objects and to propose new functionalities.

However, in the enormous numbers of the emerging smart/connected objects, only a few between those designed for end-users could be defined as successful from the economic point of view; for instance, until Jan 2018, the success rate for technology-related objects on kickstarter.com is only 19.97%. Furthermore, these data can only be taken as a measure of the interest and attraction aroused by the products, but not as a sign of real success or the quality of the user experience.

A number of different potential factors can be considered as the reasons why of the very high failure rate evidenced for connected products as they are presented on crowdfunding platforms. Most of the so called smart objects present new features, but quite often it is very difficult to predict if the users will consider them as suitable and convenient; furthermore, very often the introduction of electronic components in traditional objects implies critical issues (such as fragility, complex maintenance, need of power supply, compatibility with other technological solutions, high costs compared to traditional products, service/system requirements,…) and the new products require the users to make a cognitive effort to understand the innovative functionalities and the way to access them.

From the point of view of industrial design education, the project of connected objects requires specific skills and cognition in order to understand the functional potentials of digital technologies, to deal with the constraints they impose in the project of physical solutions, to manage the design interactive features and to optimize them with respect to the user experience.

Our research aims to devise an ideal education program for Chinese university students of Industrial Design courses so to provide them with the design methods and tools apt to design connected objects.

During the last decades, a very ample bibliography on this topic have been made available, and our research is deeply grounded in this literature; on the other hand, as the design of interactive and connected products is still a complex and error-prone task, we adopted a critical approach toward literature, and we also performed a research focused on the assessment of professional activities and praxis.

As educators, we believe in the importance of providing the students with tools and methods capable of supporting them in a long-lasting career and design activity. The introduction of Interaction Design methods and UX Design knowledge in education programs produce, as a consequence, a reduction of time and energies dedicated to the knowledge, contents and skills of traditional Industrial Design. On the other hand, in several design schools, we can observe a reduction of the importance attributed to material/physical design to the advantage of non-tangible and non-material values; the international design communities progressively have paid more interest and emphasis to the non-material dimensions of value, and have focused more on the aesthetics of activities, on the act of use [6], on the social and interactive elements of experience.

For these reasons, the introduction of knowledge from the fields of Interaction Design and Design for Experience in education programs is today very important to allow young designers to face the new design challenges; on the other hand, we do believe that material and non-material components of the designed solutions should be considered within a holistic approach focused on experience; in our opinion, the introduction of new contents and the reduction of traditional ones should be carefully evaluated and not simply carried on following trends. We consider our research as a contribution to this respect. The results reported in this paper are based on several activities and, among others, including:

  • mapping of IxD design methods in the literature

  • mapping of education programs for Industrial Design and IxD

  • interviews with young professional Chinese designers and with senior design professors and professionals

  • education experiences in Italy and China.

1.2 Connected Object and Design Education

Design methods are a relevant and important issue related to innovation from both the industrial and the education perspectives. Design methods help designers in framing contexts, in understanding needs, potentials and opportunities; in managing the complexity of constraints and goals of the project process; in planning and managing design activities so to match project goals and client needs [7]. In another word, the suitability of a design method is related to the efficiency and effectiveness of the design results, and to the quality and success of the created solutions.

As the institution for training designers, a design university should be a major platform to connect professional designers and industries with academic design researchers and design educators. The training on design methods and tools in education have a direct impact on the future professional design career of students, and on the outcomes of their design activity. University training should provide tools and techniques used in the professional activity for the local and international contexts, but also critical sense and social awareness about the impact of the design choices forming the professional sense and the ethical conscience of the designers. In our research, we consider the training of designers for the project of connected objects as centred in the intersection of different design domains (Fig. 2). Our research aims to investigate how the education programs at university level should be updated so to meet the new requirements of knowledge for the professional activities of designers in China with the international design context, without losing the Chinese cultural characteristics and values provided by the traditional art training. In this paper, we present some results of the research developed in collaboration by the two authors, a Chinese lecturer and an Italian professor, working for two important Design universities in their countries, China Academy of Art (CAA) and Politecnico di Milano (POLIMI).

Fig. 2.
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Our research is at the intersection of design methodology, connected objects and design education

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1.3 Design Issues for the Project of Connected Objects

In the design of traditional material products, the focus of the design process is on form attributes and functional characteristics, but in most cases, functions are steady and consolidated, and innovation is through geometrical features, materials, colours; the innovation of the formal attributes is associated with the generation of new sensorial effects, to new meanings and to the ways functions are embedded into the form. In the design of connected and interactive objects, quite often the functional characteristics of the objects are very innovative, and, actually, design activities and services that are enabled by technological facilities and devices. For this reason, Interaction design methods focus on the user’s actions – tasks and goals – and on the modalities of control by interfaces or other solutions; in the design of a new connected object, the design process focuses on motivations, on the cognitive and emotional mechanics and dynamics of user’s engagement, and on the reasons why the users should appreciate the service/activity enabled by the product. IxD and UX Design methods propose the use of tools for the project of interactive products including visual representations such as storyboards, mental model maps, customer journeys, and other visual diagrams created for service design. In smart objects, quite often the form has a weak connection with functions or none. In fact, a smart object can be the touch-point for a variety of digital and cloud services, as it happens, for example, with the speaker of Amazon Echo enabling the voice-control of a remote personal agent based on Artificial Intelligence.

In the design of a smart object, the drawings describing the physical appearance of the product must be accompanied by the visualization of the scenarios of use, and on the diagrams describing procedures and flows of actions enabled by the device, with different time scales so to manage best and different modalities of use, including worst and best ones, standard and extreme behaviours. As an instance, a user journey map is a diagram that explores the multiple – visible and invisible - steps taken by users as they engage with the services and functions enabled by a smart object; by drawing activities, designers wonder about the suitability of the activities they enable and manage worst-case analysis, personalization needs, and backend system requirements. In fact, the design of a connected and interactive object is the process of designing user experience and that requires a deep understanding of the real needs from user’s perspective, considering contexts, different education, cultural background, expectations and habits. Furthermore, the design of the function requires system representations and service blueprint definition. However, the UX associated to several IoT-based products is in some way off the level expected of mature consumer products [8]. Quite often, innovative products require high investments in service development and communication to make the new objects understood and appreciated; their production, therefore, requires careful strategic planning by the producer.

From another point of view, the design of connected objects is a creative activity aimed at inventing valuable applications of technology so to satisfy the specific need for diverse users; to this respect, products are the physical expressions of the solutions that are substantially non-material and non-tangible, but that require touch point to be accessed. To exploit the potentials of technologies, designers are challenged to invent and envision new scenarios lifestyles and contexts, out of the constraints of present materiality. The invention of innovative smart products can inspire technical development and orient technological innovation; on the other hand, designers inventing new objects should be capable to consider the feasibility of the invented solutions and be aware of the amount of novelty associated to their creations. To do so, a designer should acquire knowledge about the technologies and learn how to cooperate with engineers, so to provide the connective tissue between people and technology; therefore, designers must learn how to investigate what people need and want [9] and develop a social vision of the finalities of the applications of technologies.

Design methodology should support design activities and be adaptable with respect to the social and technical evolutions, so better embrace the changing situations and optimize solutions for human needs and concerns in the evolving contexts.

Finally, we must consider the rapid evolutions of the paradigms of solutions for interactive control of devices: from GUI - Graphical User Interfaces, to the more recent AI-based systems employing voice interaction, we face a continuous change toward more usable products and systems, but it is still impossible to foresee the next generations of smart devices and the kind of design issues that they will impose. The definition of a framework for education in the field of the connected object should consider both material and non-physical dimensions of design. Nonetheless, with the popularity and potentials of the connected objects, the need of designers with specific expertise in this field is an urgent issue for the companies; as such, it became a hot field for design education.

2 The Challenge of Chinese Design Education

2.1 From Industrial Design to IxD in China Academy of Art

Design as a discipline is developing in several different countries with a fast pace that is worth to monitor and analyse. For instance, in China, we count 228 universities offering the Industrial Design programs until 2016 (Network of Science & Education Evaluation in China, 2016), and the number is still rising. Design education programs can be classified into two fields, one referring to science and engineering, and another one founded on arts and humanities; in fact, several art-backgrounded educational institutions founded Industrial Design department since the last decade of 20th century. Our investigation focuses on China Academy of Art (CAA) as a research case, due to academic and education cooperation of the authors.

CAA was founded in 1928, it is a renowned university over the world, beginning with fine arts, and developing a reputation for design these years, after introducing programs related to design in 1986. With the results of the Chinese universities discipline evaluation by Chinese Ministry of Education in 2017, CAA got A+ as the first rank of design discipline with Tsinghua University.

The industrial design curriculum of CAA was founded in 1990, when the Industrial Design was in some way novelty in China education, under the urgency of new professional needs and with little background on local design theories. The Chinese concept of industrial design was defined on the 11th annual meeting of China Association of Industrial Design in 1980; the definition of industrial design was newly revised to mean: it relates to mass-produced products, gives new quality and qualifications to materials, structures, morphology, colour, surface finishing and decoration by training, technical knowledge and visual experience.

Industrial Design education and industry were developed almost simultaneously that time in China. The Bauhaus Academy, founded in 1919, is considered the forerunner of modern design education [10], by the overseas study of the first generation of Industrial Design Chinese experts. Germany was the first country to be studied; with this background, CAA adopted traditional German industrial design methodologies and curriculums, learning from western industrial design system, and developing a successful local interpretation of it. However, in the first decade of its activity, design education in CAA still focused on the form and shape of the products, emphasising the aesthetics point of view as the core and strength of education, coherently with their traditional aesthetic education.

In the late 1970s, though influenced by the international Industrial Design trends, the education programs for the majors promoted by the Ministry of Education in 1979 were named “industrial art design”. In 1987, by the revision of the promulgation of the “general university social science undergraduate directory”, the Industrial Design was named Industrial Molding Design [11]. From 2002, the Industrial Design Department of CAA started to think about the local culture as a value for product design and, with the foundation of a design school by CAA, “Design of Orientalism” became one of the major education and research theme, for each design department.

In time, between changes and evolutions, a key changing step was the introduction of interaction design studios, indicating a change from traditional product design to the exploration of interactive product design, and from aesthetics of material forms of objects to user experience design. This evolution is oriented to global markets, to the exploitation of traditional Chinese local culture in industrial design, and is a challenge about the suitable education of students so to make them capable of designing both traditional and interactive products, to produce innovation in forms, function and user experience.

As a representative of the art universities, with the single art background, CAA faces a skill-shortage for technology related products. Thus, CAA should evolve the design methods and tools so to include the design of connected objects and better respond to the industry requirements.

2.2 IxD Design Methods and Tools in China Academy of Art

If we make a survey of the existing design literature reporting design principles, methods and tools to design the so called smart or connected products, most references could be framed as western design contributions, being generated in academic or industrial research environments located in Europe and USA, from the pioneering works Norman, “The Design of Everyday Things”, to Morgridge, “Designing Interactions”, including other cornerstones of IxD the theories: Turner and Benyon, “Designing Interactive Systems: People, Activities, Contexts, Technologies”; Cooper, “About Face”; Saffer, “Designing for Interaction”, up to the more recent contributions of Rowland, et al. “Designing Connected Products”. On the whole, these references provide a coherent set of knowledge which highlights the importance of conducting user studies; of considering the user experience in its complexity; of designing keeping in mind the emotional and cognitive processes involved in the interaction; of creating mental models so to make explicit the modalities of interaction and the functions, and that give great importance to the prototyping and testing phases.

In the transition from Industrial Design to Interaction Design, design methods and tools applied in CAA were also learned from these western bibliographic references. This is the state of the art; then, in the planning of future design education programs, some questions arise: is the set of knowledge provided by the masters of IxD suitable for academic education in China? Do the design methods and tools proposed by western literature suitable for professional design activity in China? What’s the impact of these design methodologies and tools have on Chinese student motivations, skills and cultural preparation? What are the prerequisites of knowledge to obtain an effective education in the field of the IxD? Furthermore, what’s the contribution of Chinese design community to the development of a national and international design culture aimed at the development of suitable, sustainable and desirable connected products?

To collect information about these issues, we prepared a questionnaire and collected feedbacks from 132 available subjects from CAA, including 103 graduated students (from less than one year to over five years) and 29 young people still studying in the university (Fig. 3). The questions we asked were in the context of the design methods and tools learned from CAA.

Fig. 3.
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The number of the samples and the proportion of different graduates

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From Fig. 4, we see that how the graduated students consider the knowledge they learned from the university as helpful for their design career; the proportion is scaled up from students of grade two to the five-years graduated; we believe that appreciation of the learned methods increases with the number of design projects participated by the young designers. On the contrary, after working for several years, designers get in touch with new professional methods and tools and prefer them instead of the old ones in the management of their projects. Furthermore, the over five-years graduated refer to education contents provided before the teaching reform since 2012 in CAA.

Fig. 4.
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The proportion of the students’ opinion about whether the design methods and tools are useful in their design activities

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Figure 5 reports results of the question about which design phase the students think as the most important in a design process. Students realize that User Study is most important indicating that the user experience is becoming the primary concern in the design of innovative products. On another hand, already working as professional express different priorities, and include the concern about user tests. This information can be employed to orient education, so to include user tests as the main teaching.

Fig. 5.
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The proportion of the students’ opinion considering the relative importance of design phases.

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About the design methods, we compared the most familiar and most useful methods in the student perception. (Figure 6). We can see that the brainstorming is most familiar to students, as well as most useful in their minds; they are also familiar with interviews, case studies and scenarios. The results show differences between familiarity and usefulness. Furthermore, the data show that some methods are considered as helpful but not familiar; the students are still unfamiliar with some methods, such as ethnography and participatory actions.

Fig. 6.
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Most familiar and most useful design methods of the students

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In the same way, we compared answers about the mastery of tools and their usefulness (Fig. 7), to find the gap between education provided and needs. Through the figure, the highest mastery is on sketching and 3D modelling, as a consequence of the art background of CAA, where design expression is the main educational objectives in the Industrial Design department. However, there is a correlation between the tools the students master better and those they consider as useful, but not a strict coincidence, pointing out the importance of an investigation about the suitability of tools.

Fig. 7.
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The comparison between mastery and most useful of the tools to the students

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2.3 Investigating the Gap Between IxD, UX Design Methods and Tools in Education and Industry Practice

In addition to the questionnaires given to the students, we carried out interviews with professional young designers working in the field of innovative product design and, notably, on the design of connected objects.

We involved in the survey 42 subjects, including designers working for six kinds of companies, from start-ups to major internet company such as Alibaba. We report here some of the collected information and some comments. And we report the numbers of questionnaires we delivered and the main activity of the interviewed subjects. We asked the interviewed people to refer to one finished project, and we collected information about:

  • The approaches they used for user research;

  • The main design tools employed in the project;

  • The main methods adopted in the project.

The question about the steps the designers most focus on (Fig. 8), we see that the Internet companies indicate A/B tests as important; for start-ups, while every design phase is considered as important, prototyping and testing are the most important ones. Furthermore, private enterprises and design companies focus on the same phases and, with the due distinctions, they adopt the same tools.

Fig. 8.
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The design phase that is the main focus for diverse companies

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About the survey on tools employed in the design process (Fig. 9), similarly to what emerged in the previous question (Fig. 8), start-ups use several tools including Personas which is instead not as popular in other companies as we expected. User journey maps are a popular tool among these companies as well as 3D modelling.

Fig. 9.
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The most popular design tools applied in diverse companies

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Collecting data through the questionnaire, we could verify an inhomogeneous employ of terminologies to indicate design activities and, notably, an uneven interpretation of “ethnography” as an activity to accompany and prepare the innovative design. From Fig. 10 we can see that relatively little resources are dedicated to it; as it emerged from interviews, only major Internet companies use “ethnography” and participatory action. Meanwhile, the major Internet companies prefer to use diverse methods to conduct design.

Fig. 10.
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The most popular method employed by different types of companies in China

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We also collected other information showing that the case studies, data collection and analysis are the most popular methods among these companies. What’s more, from our investigation it emerged that a very common approach in the design of innovative products is to organize experiments based on developing concepts (rendering) and physical working prototypes to perform evaluation tests and studies, directly involving final users to employ the prototypes or, at least, to express opinions on rendering, so to collect the feedbacks and comments.

We used the collected data to investigate opinions on design methodologies by comparing attitudes of students and professional designers.

From Fig. 11 we can see some phenomena about the adoption and convenience of design methods. The diagram compares case study most popular methods in the professional field, with those that are familiar to students. We can see that in some cases students do not perceive as useful as some design tools that are employed in companies. The data give hints about the importance of a better presentation of some design tools to students.

Fig. 11.
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Design methods: familiarity and usefulness for students in comparison with adoption in industrial companies

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In Fig. 12 we see that the user journey map has the potential to be a suitable tool for education in CAA since there is a gap between the rate attributed to students and its application by professionals. Meanwhile, the video scenarios offer education opportunities for the students in CAA.

Fig. 12.
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The comparison among the tools those the students most good at using, the most useful for students and the most popular ones in industrial companies

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3 The Experiment of IxD, UX Design Methodologies Exploration

3.1 The Context and Cultural Issues of International Design Educational Experiment

In the last decades, international exchange programs for students and teachers have been vastly encouraged and supported, so producing countless opportunities for collaborations, mutual learning and the creation of main streams of shared knowledge, toward the construction of a global community with no boundaries. However, this doesn’t mean that the knowledge learned from the western countries is simply and straightforwardly applied in Chinese academic teaching and in the exertion of the designer’s profession. The cultural background, language barriers, different metaphors, and other more ineffable differences make impossible a flat adoption of design methodologies in every context, and we believe that the investigation of the differences developed in the local environment is a source of growth for the international design community. Differences contribute to make every education and design activity very special, and influence the whole didactical process, creating problems but also inspiring situations, stimulating creativity and dismantling old mental frames. As an instance, the basic concepts of “design tools” and “design methods” cannot be given as granted when we translate it from English into a language with a different grammar structure such as Chinese, since some of the terminologies and the related distinctions are defined in Chinese in different ways, and should be redefined when dealing in a multicultural environment involving Chinese designers or students. This is especially true when we deal also with a different disciplinary background, and also with the designers with art background. In IxD, we call as “tools” some conceptual apparatus as Alan Cooper’s Personas, while “tools” in common Chinese language is to be thought as a tangible instrument, such as a computer, pen, screwdrivers, not including sketching, persona, scenario, and other basic elements of the design context. Language differences make friction in theoretical conversation about design, introducing involuntary misunderstandings even when all the converser share a common language. More critical, in our experience, is the understanding of some terminologies such as “ethnography” and “empathy”, which are in design referred to fields of knowledge, to design methodologies and activities, and to approaches to design for innovation. Empathy supports the design process as design considerations move from rational and practical issues to personal experiences and private contexts [12]. These terms either are not familiar to some Chinese students of design, or they can be interpreted in a very different way from context to context; one reason could be the specific development of Chinese Industrial Design. About design education, most Chinese colleges and universities focus on the basic skills, techniques and knowledge, but have a serious lack of courses on methodology; main focus consists of two parts: one is knowledge and accomplishment, such as craft technology knowledge, mechanics principles, ergonomics, aesthetics, the history of design, etc.; the other is the basis and skills of modelling such as the three-dimensional composition, CAD, renderings and so on [13].

At the same time, there is a gap, in both western and eastern contexts, between the ideal design methods, tools and approaches aimed at innovation as they are taught in universities, and the real activities performed by professional designers in little and large companies. As an instance, in our design activities in collaboration with companies and industries in IxD projects, the time and resources dedicated to preliminary user studies, ethnography and research in the field are very often limited and scarce.

So, in the definition of the contents that should be provided to young design students in China Academy of Art, we found ourselves in the middle of a triangular gap in which extract the set of suitable practical and conceptual knowledge: theoretical IxD and UX Design expertise (with it principles, methods and tools), Chinese traditional industrial design (based on thousand years of Chinese art & craft and on the typical Bauhaus teachings), and modern era professional praxis as it is developed in the China industry system by young designers of innovative products.

3.2 The Survey on the Curriculum in China Academy of Art

In order to produce more knowledge for our research, we performed an education experience in CAA involving students. Before that, we surveyed the curriculum of Industrial Design department in CAA, to analyze the skills and the tools learned by students, so to identify knowledge and skills that can be applied in both Industrial Design and Interaction Design. Here we introduce the survey and present the results with our brief conclusions (Table 1).

Table 1. Used tools of ID and IxD in Industrial Design Department of CAA
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From the comparisons, we can observe that there are similar courses for the training on the design skills at performance, techniques and practice, while, at the phase of professional training, there are differences. About the tools, the tables show that students had the experience of using common tools, such as sketching, personas, scenarios and so on. By the comparison of the literature methods and tools in UCD and the current situation in CAA, we found that only half of them are applied in the teaching activities (Table 2).

Table 2. The literature methods and tools in UCD and the current situation of CAA
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3.3 An Education Experience in the Design of Connected Objects

Course plan and the practical situation

Our research also included some education experiences and, notably a course in CAA for the students of the Industrial Design program, organized before their graduation final project work. The course involved 26 students, and its object was the design of connected objects as a functional evolution of traditional domestic objects. The entire course lasted eighteen full-time days, and the final delivery was a concept presented through its physical description and a video scenario describing functions and use. We design process refer to IxD literature, and it is reported in Table 3.

Table 3. The planned schedule and its practical situation
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With respect to the planned schedule, the survey about existing case-studies and the introduction about connected objects took less time; the user journey analysis was not as smooth as we expected; in the design phase, the definition of functions required an extra day and much revision work with each team.

Methods and tools application in an education experiment

As expected, the research on existing solutions and case studies was carried on by students very efficiently: the Chinese marketplaces offer a very large variety of solutions and products, and a valuable opportunity for students to become acquainted with smart objects (Fig. 13).

Fig. 13.
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Case studies from the research of “Sleepod” student team

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Students involved in the course had no previous experience in the field of IxD, and they were not familiar with customer journey analysis. We asked them to produce storyboards as a vivid and intuitive way to describe the interactive and dynamic features of products and to visualize the activities and procedures of their concept since the very begin of the design process. This approach was very effective suitable for the art backgrounded students, due to their ability in sketching and drawing; they created expressive and vivid storyboards to express the use of connected objects (Fig. 14) in just one day. Through the construction of the storytelling, the positive and critical issues related to the interactive features of the products could emerge and be discussed; this helped students in refining and revising the functions and physical characteristics of their concepts.

Fig. 14.
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Storyboard (part) of team “IRIGO” and “Streexplore.”

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At the beginning of the design process, we asked the students to produce a creative brief and to consider it as a final agreement about their design goals. We did so to encourage students to become aware of constraints of real design processes, to keep under control the temptation of changing their design proposals, and consider factors affecting design efficiency; this activity was complex for the students with the art background, and it required one more day to improve the briefs. The final brief had to focus mostly on functional features and services, and its use got a positive result for the students, “It made us work out such a great product in two weeks, usually we should spend four weeks to make a project such as this” was said by one of the students from “Sleepod” team.

Video-scenarios were produced for the final presentation of concepts, and also for preliminary concept evaluation [14]. CAA students had previous experiences in the production of video-storytelling, but they hadn’t used or even considered it as a design tool. As a result, due to the artistic background of the students, the presentations produced a variety of languages employed in the presentation of concepts, as they adopted different styles and representation techniques, including not only in real person actions but also different cartoon styles, such as stop-motion animation and low polygon animation (Fig. 15).

Fig. 15.
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Video scenarios in the course, low polygon animation, stop-motion animation and real person actions

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The results of the course and the feedbacks

After the course, we discussed the experiment with the teachers in the Industrial Design department, investigating the opportunity to restructure the process of the Interaction Design course, introducing new tools and improving the presentation of others. We also carried out interviews with each student team, and some results are listed here,

  • The biggest difference between this course and others is the design thinking, and we learn something new beyond the fixed approached, some new tools helping us a lot.

  • The most useful thing I learned from this course is the arrangement and plan of our design works. It makes me think the design is not only about how to think about the result but also think about the process planning.

  • This course helped us start to think about the design process, to make us pay more attention to design methods and tools.

3.4 Learning from Teaching About Design Methodologies

In this education experiment, we tried to understand the impact of the design tools we presented to the students on their capability to manage a design experience. The CAA students could produce new concepts of the connected object in a very short time, and some produced interesting results. Two teams also had produced 3D printing physical prototypes. Their drawing skills compensated the lack of expertise in IxD. Meanwhile, their very strong skills in drawing allowed them to be very effective in the creation of good video-scenarios and prototypes to test concepts and the course provided awareness about the design potentials of their capabilities. The design brief was effective to propose a rational framework for their design activities.

On the whole, we obtained several hints useful in the re-definition of education programs, and also demonstrated the potentials of robust education about drawing.

4 Conclusions

The research we are performing is not based on a statistical data but is effective in revealing phenomena and producing hints for further investigation. Through our discussion and the experiments, we developed the idea that art backgrounded students show an emotional approach to the development of specific solutions and can maintain the focus both on functions and physical forms. With respect to the definition of programs for the students of CAA, we can summarize here some of our findings.

  • The creation of international design experiences with teachers coming from other countries is very valuable for Chinese students, and it makes them learning the IxD methods and tools mainly developed by western countries. However, we can learn more by the fast development of China, and there is a knowledge developed by young design professionals and by Internet industries that have a profound influence on the global business. So, we face a challenge on how to reverse this knowledge in education programs.

  • Concerning different culture and discipline backgrounds, rational design approaches and emotional art-oriented thinking can rely efficiently on specific tools, for instance, to verify exploit potentials of technologies in innovation. The dedicated literature is effective to learn from science and technology research, while the reference to existing products should be accompanied by critical thinking. While the case study analysis is a key activity in design, it is reductive to rely only on case-study research when aimed at innovation. More attention should be dedicated to blue-sky creative activities.

  • With respect to the design expression abilities that are the traditional main contents of art-oriented courses, as in CAA, these abilities show to be very useful also with respect to the design of innovative products since sketching, visually described user journeys, provide the means to produce convincing storyboards; these capabilities that are straightforward for art students, are suitable for innovation of interaction design approaches. The ability to produce in very short times 3d models and physical prototypes supports an approach based on A-B concept comparisons and tests, that seems to be very convenient for the design profession in China.

  • The capability to manage time issues, to reliably plan time-schedule and intermediate deliveries is a very important characteristic of professional designers, and it is not naturally included in the skills of art students. The introduction of design tools such as the creative brief to describe the main features of the object to be designed, its main functional characteristics and innovation values, was quite effective in our experiment and helped the students to understand time and efficiency issues and to indicate possible practical solutions.

  • By our research, the gap between the methods and tools applied in professional industry and those included in education programs in China is large; the IxD tools and methods that are applied in Chinese companies are much more than those taught in CAA. A further investigation is, therefore, necessary to understand, for each tool, if its value in education is practical or conceptual, i.e. if it is useful to solve design problems or to introduce design principles. As our final goal is the definition of programs apt to provide young designers with the required skills and theoretical knowledge capable of supporting them in their profession, the analysis of education the suitable education contents must be accompanied to the investigation of real professional activities.

Further development of our research will focus on the how to better foster the Chinese art tradition in the design for innovation of smart, connected objects, to enhance the quality of interaction and user experience.