Teaching Reform and Practice
in Curriculum of Engineering Science of Industrial Design
Chunfa Sha, Kai Zhang, Liqing Huang
Department of industrial Design
Abstract-In economy transformation period of China,
realization the transformation from "Made in China" into
"Created in China " is extremely urgent. Enterprises,
especially middle and small ones, need more industrial
designers. They also put forward new demands on designer'
knowledge structure. Designer must be able to solve not only
product form design problems but also problems in production
manufacturing. So, in the present industrial design education,
it is important to improve students' ability to solve production
manufacturing problems. For this purpose, we provide a new
lesson named engineering science of industrial
Teaching example is presented to show the effect of the
course.
Keywords-industrial design; teaching
engineering science of industrial design
I . INTRODUCTION
Chinese economy is in a transformation period,
from "Made in China" into "Created in China" .
Enterprises, especially middle and small ones, need
more industrial designers. They also put forward new
demands on designer' knowledge structure. Designer
must be good at not only creating and design
representation but also solving production
manufacturing problems with the knowledge of material
and forming process and so on. Few middle and small
companies like to afford industrial designer and
structure designer at the same time. Comprehensive
talents are more popular.
But in Chinese universities and colleges, about
industrial design (ID) education, we always pay more
attention to art than technology , more attention to
design representation than researching and more
attention to the expression skills than product function
and product structure design. The situation leads to the
result that students have enough aesthetic quality but
not engineering science knowledge. For the same reason,
ID education and social needs are disjoined.
In order to improve the situation, we provide a new
lesson named engineering science of ID.
II. CURRENT TEACHING SITUATION ABOUT
SIMILAR COURSES
It is showed. in the curriculum criterion of ID
which is made by the Education Ministry in 2001. that
curriculums such as engineering foundation about ID
978-1-4244-7974-0110/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE
Jiangsu University
Zhenjiang, China
must be set up as key curriculum or required course.
And because of the social needs, there are more and
more universities and colleges could offer similar
courses. But, there are still some shortcomings in actual
teaching activity.
a) The pertinence of these courses is not strong.
Because there are no teaching experience that can be
studied on, teachers cannot but to adopt engineering
specialty teaching mode directly. Lessons such as
design. machine design foundation, electron and electrician,
material mechanics that are more suitable for
engineering students are set up for ID students. These
lessons are so difficult to ID students. They can only
reform; learn them depend on mechanical memorizing and
forget what they learned quickly.
b) There are no or less practices in similar
courses. Some universities and colleges initiate new
courses that synthesizes the contents of material science
and mechanics and so on. The difficulties of these
courses are reduced. It becomes easy for ID student to
learn on. But, in these courses, there are no practices. ID
students have no idea about the purpose of these lessons.
They do not know how to use the knowledge they
learned to do design.
c) The courses are less interesting. ID education
is always more emphasized on imagery thinking. But
engineering foundation is more logically. To ID students,
these courses are not interesting at all. They may think
that it is more useful to train in CAD skills and
sketching skills with practice, but not spend time on
these lessons.
III. THE CONTENT OF ENINEERING SCIENCE OF
INDUSRIAL DESIGN
In order to improve the situation, we provide a
new lesson named engineering science of ID. This
course features integrating theory teaching with ID
professional training. Students could grasp theory
knowledge easily through practice. There are two
parts in the course: basic theory knowledge and
training.
A. Basic Theory Knowledge
The purpose of the course is to improve students'
ability to solve problems in ID and manufacturing. So
the basic theory knowledge is composed of the most
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common and necessary contents: elementary mechanics,
material science, technology of material processing,
mould, product structure design and so on.
a) Elementary mechanics. In this section, students
are required to master the elementary knowledge of
statics, mechanics of materials and automotive
aerodynamics. Cases are given to show how to design
simple products with them.
b) Material science. In this section, students are
required to master basic physical properties of materials.
Application cases of different materials are shown to
analyse the difference of them. Students are required to
design several simple products according to the
different properties of materials.
c) Technology of material processing. In this
section, students are required to have a basic
understanding of forming technology of different
materials and to draw comparisons. Cases are given to
show the forming technology and its influence on
product shape.
d) Mould. In this section, students are required to
realize the principal of mould design. Cognition practice
is a good way for students acquiring the knowledge.
e) Product structure design. In this section,
functions of classic structures are compared. Several
common structures are studied deeply.
B. Training
Training is an important part of the course. It is a
useful bridge by which the students integrate theoretical
knowledge and practical work properly. There are two
different training used to improve students' different
abilities: basic training and intensive training.
Figure I. Explosive assembly drawing of a hand-powered
flashlight
Basic training could enhance
understanding of the basis theories. Intensive training
could improve students' design ability based on these
theories.
a) Basic Training:
The main contents of basic training contain classic
products assembling and disassembling, assembly
drawing and explosive assembly drawing making.
When assemble or disassemble a product, students
should make summary record about the materials,
forming technologies, the methods of surfaces treatment
that used when the product is made. Its mechanical
properties should be discussed as well. All this work is
beneficial to enhance students' understanding of
manufacturing process. Figure 1 is an example of basic
training in our class. It is a hand-drawn explosive
assembly drawing of a hand-powered flashlight.
b) Intensive training:
Intensive training is the most important part of the
course. For the intended goal, intensive training must
follow a certain principle, that is a principle with
structure design as the dominant factor. Structure
problems are found and solved firstly, and then product
shape should be designed correspondingly. We will
show the training principle and process with an
intensive training case in our class.
1) Key steps of the intensive training
CD Design task setting and design plan making. It
would be better if the task is a real project. Or, the task
is aim at applying for a patent or winning a design
competition. A work schedule is necessary for the
smooth running of the training.
® Product analysis. The problems about usage,
function, structure, manufacture should be found firstly.
@ Information acquisition and analysis. To solve
problems found above, necessary information is
important. Similar products and structures, other
solutions to the problems, patent literature are all in the
range for collecting.
@) Design idea seeking. Based on an overall
consideration of various factors, solutions for the
existing problems should be proposed. Then the
feasibility of the solutions should be verified with
computer models. And modifying is essential for good
design.
@ Product shape design. The human factor is
important during product shape design. And the perfect
unity of forms and functions is a characteristic of good
shapes.
2) Intensive training case
We give an example to show how intensive
training is made. In the example, 30 periods is a training
cycle and all the students are grouped with four people
in each. The whole process is shown as below.
CD Set the wine bottle opener as design object. It is
a task aim at applying for a patent.A work schedule was
made by the group leader.
students' ® Product analysis. Through investigation and
32
firsthand experience, it was found that there are usually
two steps to draw a cork from a bottle with common
wine bottle openers. Firstly, revolve the bottle opener
into the cork. Secondly, pull the opener to open the
(1)
bottle. It is not convenient, because the user has to
(2)
change the direction of the applied force and the hand
(3)
posture at least twice.
(�l
® Information acquisition and analysis. In order (�
to change the situation, the design group collected a lot (6)
of materials, such as gear mechanism, the principle of (7l
the level, metal properties and so on. Some ideas had .(�)
just come into their mind during information acquisition
(12)
and analysis. They express design ideas with sketching, (9)
as shown in fi ure 2.
(11) (10)

r
, ;t�j If
I bandle 2 pawl 3 driving gear 4 driven gear S fulC11lD1 bar

�
/

. �l
,t .
6 ball 7 slipper 8 pawl 9 screw \0 groove II sleeve 12 spacer
,
�
,
) Figure 4.Assemblage diagrammatic sketch

,1
[I, r
l_,,

-r
·
r<-

'It
•

I �) I -
(, )7 1
'l! '
�
-:
.,.,

I Y �- 1"
"V
. . .

r� U.,.J,'
'

1
)' I �

Figure 2. Sketching

@ Design idea seeking. The most feasible idea

was selected and made again as schematic diagram in a
plane way, as shown in figure 3. As shown in figure 3,
the cork could be drawn out with only one motion that
is pressing down the handle form horizontal position to
vertical position.
Figure 5. 3D digital model

Figure 3. Schematic diagram

With the help of teacher from mechanical design Figure 6. Product shape design
and material science, details about the idea became clear.
As shown in assemblage diagrammatic sketch (Figure IV. CONCLUSION
4), structure like gear wheels and ratchet wheels are
used for the idea. The new course, engineering science of ID, is
According to the assemblage diagrammatic sketch, useful to improve students' abilities of solving
3D digital model (Figure 5) is created. Feasibility of the manufacturing problems. And its training part is
idea is analysed in depth. practical and interesting. Currently, students' works are
just used to apply for patent, but are still not fit for
@) Product shape design. As shown in Figure 6,
manufacturing. Fortunately, there are more and more
the wine bottle opener looks like a soldier. The handle is
real design tasks that are being introduced into
designed as a rifle. To a certain extent, the design is a
classroom.
unity of forms and functions.

33
 Acknowledgment: This work was supported by
education reform project of Jiangsu University (NO.
1201300003) and education reform project of Jingjiang
College of Jiangsu University (NO. JJ08c036)

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