Industrial designers' thinking in the stage of concept generation for social design: themes, strategies and modes

Social design produces strategic, systematic solutions or new cultures as a response to the complexity of social changes and, in consequence, designers who are used to the traditional way of ideation may not be well prepared for the requirements of social design. This paper identified the characteristics of the concept generation of industrial design students participating in a social design practice as novices. Using the think-aloud protocol, we collected the conversations and self-reports of students (n = 42). We then conducted a qualitative analysis of the designers’ activities with the inductive and deductive coding method. An effect of prior knowledge was found on the themes of concept, as well as on the concept generation strategies and modes that industrial designers would prefer. Through a factor analysis of the frequency of students’ design activities, six concept generation strategies were clustered. There were eight concept generation modes for social design we summarized with the journeys of designers' activities. This study also revealed the effect of concept generation strategies and modes of industrial design students on the quality of their social design concepts. The results may also shed light on the question how we can foster the quality of industrial designers to adapt to the extension of disciplinary boundary in design.