The Importance of Child-Oriented Design Education in Industrial Design

Children’s products should be designed according to their age characteristics and culture and provide them with the opportunities to learn, explore and experiment. These products should also enhance children’s creativity, imagination, manual and mental dexterity. Regarding to the important role of products in elevating children’s life quality, industrial designers could take an active role in child-related industry if they were educated in this field of design and learned how to design for children based on requirements and standards. Child-oriented design is one of the different fields in industrial design that can be taught at universities. This paper Studies the importance of child-oriented design education at universities (industrial design faculties).In this research the data were collected from four different sources. First, the title of all dissertations submitted in industrial design faculties during the last 6 years, were checked. Second, a total of 20 toy sellers were interviewed and their opinions about children’s product were recorded. Third, the questionnaires were sent to 24 managers or top executives in children’s product design companies and the rest of data were gathered through web-based questionnaires from industrial design professors. The research findings showed that a significant number of industrial design students, both undergraduate and postgraduate, are interested in designing for children. According to the survey of dissertation titles, 22 percent of undergraduate students and 24 percent of master students have chosen child-oriented design titles among the various field of industrial design without any prior education.   Moreover, all toy sellers interviewed expressed that children and their parents prefer to buy imported products due to their variation and also their qualities. The sellers also said they are not eager to sell Iranian products as they cannot attract their consumers.  In addition, the industry survey revealed that more than 95 percent of managers are not familiar with design process as their majors are not related to design or even some of them do not have university education. 20 percent of these companies do not have design sectors and 64 percent of the rest do not have design experts in their design sectors. Although about 55 percent of managers claimed that their products have been fully designed in their companies, there are some examples of products that have been fully or partly copied the concept of some other products. On the whole, there are severe shortcomings in child-related industries, mostly because of the absence of child-oriented design experts. Findings also indicated that industrial design professors believe that child-oriented education can bring significant benefits to child-related industries and flourish Iran’s local market. They think that our products cannot be successful in local market firstly because of their bad qualities and secondly due to their low quantities. They also argued that inaugurating a new elective course with the title of designing for children in undergraduate industrial design program is the first step to start child-oriented design education according to the current condition of universities in Iran.