ABSTRACT: Although the professional culture of designers has been emphasized as a peripheral issue in various fields of study in design, such as design culture and design management, it has rarely been the central topic of research. However, studies from other professional fields have demonstrated the significance of studying professional culture, especially its formation in higher educational contexts, as it has direct implications on professional status and career prospects of these professions' members. This paper aims to redress this gap by exploring how the professional culture acquired in industrial design education shapes industrial designers’ work experiences in manufacturing companies? It focuses on the context of Turkey and empirically draws on interviews with industrial designers who have work experience in large-scale manufacturing companies. Interviews reveal insights into industrial designers’ perceptions of the profession, experiences in undergraduate education, adaptations to professional life, and professional experiences in manufacturing companies where they collaborate with other professions, where cultural disconnect becomes visible. The qualitative data analysis highlighted the significance of being a community and having flexibility in space and time in industrial design’s professional culture in the examined context. The findings underline collaboration and teaching of soft skills such as communication and teamwork as implications for industrial design education.

KEYWORDS: Industrial Design Education, Design Culture, Professional Culture,, Designer-Engineer Relations, Collaboration in Design, Manufacturing Companies

ABSTRACT: 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.

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

ABSTRACT: With the global developments in the fields of innovation and technology, the industrial design profession is continuously expanding its definition. By not only creating or enhancing products but also services, and systems; industrial design operates in mostly manufacturing related industries such as; furniture, white goods, and electronic appliances. Today, the profession’s continuously increasing importance and place in the market attract the attention of these companies. Because manufacturing companies are mainly engineer-oriented, various variables emerge in the adaptation of industrial designers to the professional environment. Thus, differences appear in the professional culture of industrial designers which acquired in the undergraduate education. This situation shapes the definition and culture of the profession. In the literature, there are many sources on the descriptions and the cultures of many professions. However, there is a gap in the literature about the professional culture of the industrial design profession. The thesis aims to explore the relation between the professional culture of industrial designers and their experiences in professional life. While doing so, the thesis also reveals industrial designers’ adaptation to professional life, their interactions with other professions, and organizational cultures of manufacturing companies that industrial designers work in. In the field study, data were collected through 15 semi-structured interviews with industrial designers who were working in large scale manufacturing companies. After a qualitative approached data analysis, concerning the professional culture of industrial designers, this thesis reveals that there are three main conclusions regarding the importance of being a community, the importance of having flexibility in space and time, and definition of industrial design profession.

KEYWORDS: Design Management, Cultural Studies, Organizational Studies, Industrial

Design Culture, Industrial Design Education

ABSTRACT: Since their emergence, design disciplines have been working to offer better living conditions to the masses. Their contexts, processes, and outcomes are shaped according to the social, economic, and political movements and issues. This situation has paved the way for the inclusion of various user groups in the design process. Mainly, enabling open-source environments and developing technology have strengthened the involvement of diverse user groups in the design and have provided continuous development in design democratization. The paper aims to understand better how researchers discuss the concept of democratization within a design context. In order to do this, the paper first explores the meaning and origin of design democratization. Then it examines the related approaches that have emerged over the years in different geographies. As a conclusion of these explorations, the paper emphasizes the importance of social inclusion, diversity, and empowerment in design democratization.

KEYWORDS: Design Democratization, Design Approaches, Social Inclusion, Diversity in Design, Empowerment in Design

ABSTRACT: Today, the maker movement is regarded as a socio-cultural movement that represents designing objects for innovations. In these creativity-based activities, individuals from different backgrounds; craftspeople, DIY’ers, engineers, designers, and hackers, form a community and work collaboratively for mutual, open-source innovations. With the recently emerged technologies and digital fabrication tools, movement is continuously expanding its scope and has evolved into a new experience, and for many, it is now considered as new kind of industrial revolution. Makers create within their community by using new digital tools and technologies in spots called makerspaces, in which of learning, experience sharing, and mentoring are evolved into maker events. In literature, there are many sources on these concepts, however there is a gap about the maker communities in Turkey. Research aims to be an information source on the dynamics and process design of “making” activities in Turkish maker communities that provides insights to sustain and enhance local maker communities in the future. Within this aim, semi-structured interviews were conducted with founders and facilitators from selected Turkish maker communities. After a qualitative data analysis, research reveals that there are two main conclusions regarding the foundation of the Turkish maker mindset and emergence of self-sustaining communities.

KEYWORDS: Maker Movement, maker community, makerspaces, open-source design, sustainability

ABSTRACT: In the established design studio courses, the design projects progress with studios' table critics presenting students' developments to researchers, academics, teachers, and lecturers. Due to the recent Covid-19 pandemic, researchers, teachers, and students are challenged to adapt to a range of new educational tools, techniques, and learning methods. Thus, in design studio courses, projects that had to be carried out remotely due to the pandemic, physical models, or freehand sketches used in face-to-face critiques were interrupted. Students had to change their approaches and urge to use different technological tools. In other words, in face-to-face design education, students must prepare their initial ideas in freehand sketches and mock-ups to develop and finalize their design projects. So, these preparations are a crucial stage of design studio courses. However, studio lecturers had to locate technology in the focus of studio courses with the pandemic process. Integrating technology into design studio courses offers different advantages for both students and lecturers. Mobile-learning (M-learning) has become an important technology component in design education. M-learning enables students to learn, collaborate, share their ideas independently from time and place with the internet's help and recent technological developments (Park, Nam, and Cha, 2012). The study aims to identify M-learning adaptation's strengths and weaknesses in design studio courses. In that sense, the study focuses on a specific AR tool (Adobe Aero) usage during the design projects' decision-making phase in online design studio courses. To achieve this, information was collected through; a series of observations from the decision-making phase of a graduation project of an industrial design student, and a semi-structured interview with the student was conducted. After qualitative data analysis, the research reveals the importance of using an AR tool in design education regarding its positive contribution to the M-Learning adaptation.

KEYWORDS: Augmented Reality, Adobe Aero, M-Learning, AR in education