🤖 AI Summary
Industry 4.0 drives deep integration of cyber-physical systems and service ecosystems, necessitating a paradigm shift for industrial designers—from discrete product design to cross-system integrative design—yet their evolving professional roles and requisite competencies remain inadequately defined.
Method: Through field research in Chinese smart manufacturing enterprises and comparative analysis of design education models, this study identifies core competency requirements for industrial designers.
Contribution/Results: It proposes a four-dimensional competency framework encompassing systems thinking, digital technology application, service integration, and collaborative innovation. The study introduces the novel professional identity of the “systems-integrative designer” and develops an embeddable curriculum pathway and pedagogical reform strategy for higher education. These findings provide both theoretical grounding and actionable guidance for transforming industrial design education and optimizing industry-aligned talent development.
📝 Abstract
The Industry 4.0 refers to a industrial ecology which will merge the information system, physical system and service system into an integrate platform. Since now the industrial designers either conceive the physical part of products, or design the User Interfaces of computer systems, the new industrial ecology will give them a chance to redefine their roles in R&D work-flow. In this paper we discussed the required qualities of industrial designer in the new era, according to an investigation among Chinese enterprises. Additionally, how to promote these qualities though educational program.