The Product Design Methods Driven By The Meaning

The basic theoretical problem of the study is about:the essence of design is innovation.One side it is to create new and unknown thing,another side design must be understandable and recognizable otherwise it could not be communicated to the user.The former emphasizes that new design from nothing to everything while the latter emphasizes the understandable and recognizable communicative design.In the development of design,more and more attention was paid to the understanding and cognition of product,but giving a new meaning to the product is the essence of product development actually.Hence,it is guidance significance to clarify the product meaning to design innovation.So it is very important to explore the product design methods driven by meaning in theoretical and practical level.The study starts from design phenomenon to carry out the research gradually.In study strategy,The paper uses double evidence method,theory evidence and factual evidence,in order to reach the truth and use of the design study.Theory evidence is mainly about two aspects,product body and design body based on design historic events.The aim of study of these two aspect is achieving the new theory of meaning and understanding of meaning from the theory point.In fact evidence,the study is mainly based on case analysis and experiment.the aim of this part research is to get new theory and evidence by analyzing cases and experimental data.There are three experiments:The experiment of customer demand,cooperation model investigation and product meaning gaining experiment.Facing these issues,the paper mainly uses literature reading,comparative method of historical research,interview,phenomenon description analysis,grounded theory,retrospective investigation and analysis method.Finally,the paper sets up the product design theory frame,process,method model and strategy driven by meaning based on the design analysis and study.The organization structure is in accordance with the study content.The first chapter is the academic background introduction of product meaning study of social and design development.There is a literature review relevant to produce meaning from product cognition,design thinking and digital technology and internet technology such three aspects.It defines the concept,jargon and critical issue studied in the paper and it also explains the background of the topic and necessity of study.The second chapter is the origin of product meaning research on product body.It could be known from the study that product meaning comes from value and is based on usage.Product meaning is all kinds of Could Be and Should Be for human future life.The third chapter is the study of product from design body.There are twoparts about design body,design evolution and design behavior study.It discusses changes of design understanding behind design activities through the design evolution analysis.On the other hand,it mainly discusses the limitation,restriction and influence of the design method and character of the design process as well as design cooperation mode to the exploration of product meaning.The fourth chapter is mainly on the part of the experiment,which is about the study on the process of gaining product meaning in design practice from a micro perspective.The method is retrospective investigation.The object of study is an academic training course of product design.Then three step approaches to gaining product meaning and the description method of new product meaning is put forward.The fifth chapter is the theory of product design methods driven by meaning,including the product design strategy and though driven by meaning,the process of product development and the relocation of the relevant role of design.Seen from the innovation of study,The study of product design method driven by meaning is to make meaning discussion as the key part of product design development.The meaning is different from product shape,structure,color and material.It is hard to be observed and it would be ignored normally,but people have demand of product meaning and product meaning can be guider to product development.Product meaning has become the core content of product competition between different enterprises.Hence,it has important theory study value to explore the product design method driven by meaning and it should be important theory support and reference of our design education reform.The theory achievement of the study mainly includes:1.Study product meaning from product body.This part uses case analysis,literature reading and investigation method to have a systemic analysis of product meaning,the existed foundation of product meaning and the nature of product meaning.By exploring the product meaning,it points out that product meaning is the effective path to improve product value and product meaning is based on usage instead of cognition.Study points out that product meaning is about people,which means all Could Be and Should Be of future human life.The Could Be and Should Be do not mean the life in future or the life should be,but the method or approach to get the Could Be and Should Be.In the part of meaning foundation study,paper points out that the demand of people is the foundation of product meaning.People are active in demand,instead of reaction to outer stimulation or a conditioned reflex.People have demand to product but there is a fuzziness which shows the people’ s unknown and fuzzy to the specific method.In the study of product meaning nature,it points out that the product meaning has social nature which performs in the concrete operation process,method and the guidance to people in thought and product participating in the shaping and reform of society with the form of opinion.2.Study the product meaning from design behavior aspect.This part uses the comparative method of historical research,interview,phenomenon description analysis,grounded theory and so on.The study of design evaluation and the essence of meaning,design method and design process as well as design cooperation mode.Through the study of design evaluation,it points out that the attributes that the design focus is extended from personal to the society.Design has been a way of discussing society.Commercial and social are two necessary contexts of understanding design.Focusing on the social issue of the point of commerce has been the direction of product development of modern enterprise.Through the study of design method and design process,it points out that the design method should be changed with the object and problem faced by design.In the past,design would focus on the solution of the question,but it is a self-adjustment process.With the development of society,people realize that it is urgent to focus on these issues,which about the complexity of human and natural system and the threat to nature and society made by expanding human activities,from strategic level.Besides,there is indeterminacy and fuzziness in design which is shown in the design topic and design result.Because of indeterminacy of design,design could bring all kinds of possibility to human.There are two product development models,incremental development and radical development.Compared with incremental development,radical development is likely to lead to a global optimization.This method provides the possibility of new meaning creating.Through the study of design cooperation mode,it points out that design cooperation mode affects the production of new meaning of a product.The cooperation that has clearer design requirement from the aspect of product and technology will have less span of design result and the feasibility of having new meaning is less.On the contrary,the cooperation that has fuzzier and less design requirement from the aspect of product and technology will have more spans and the feasibility of having new meaning is larger.Volume of design from aspect of product and technology is negative to the feasibility of producing new meaning.Meanwhile,it also points out that the new product meaning is related to the time of design participating in product development time.3.Study the product meaning gaining and description from the design practice.It mainly uses retrospective investigation and analysis.With the retrospective investigation and analysis of academic course of design practice,this chapter provides a three-step process of gaining new meaning,problem leap,interpretation and insight,and theory models of each process are formed respectively.Problem leap means a leap from design problems to study problems and it could be looked at the leak from the issue of object to the people and things in such larger layer.The product meaning is faced with a future life.The issue of human and things is that design and produce meaning really care about.Interpretation process is a process to understand thing deeply and it is a open with many people’ s participation to achieve the correction of existed cognition method and the vision of look problems to have a re-understanding of thing by discussion,The interpretation process is different from the solving problem process.There is no obvious problem orientation in the interpretation process,which provides a good condition to change the vision to look at problem.Insight process is a process that a new meaning is produced after a deep thinking for a long time.Insight process is often shown as a sudden.The process of insight is a self-reflection.Before the production of product meaning,although there is a process to gain knowledge from outside,it still needs the self-reflection process.The process of self-reflection is a self-understanding and listening to the inner heart.In time,insight process needs separate time periods for calming and deep thinking.In the part of product meaning description,it proposes the product context building method.Make story as cruel and frame of Model,and make the method of storyboard as the way of segmentation.Product and all elements of context are organized together by the story line.Then the product meaning could be visualized by digital and sketch ways.In the meaning description,the paper points out that the context is a relationship,The product context building is building a relationship between all elements.At the same time,the model of product meaning description is pointed out.4.In product design,the product meaning is also a way of thinking,The method makes sure the authenticity of design,and makes it is possible to think about the product and human and relationship of human and society from a strategic level.Product design process is a process to make existing things vague and change familiar thing into unfamiliar,so the desire to know it again is aroused to deepen the understanding of a thing.Seen from macroscopic angle,the design process of the product has three processes.Seen from a microscopic point,the design process of product also has three processes.The macro product process includes the design process to change user ’ s cognition process.The micro product process includes the design process getting rid of existed meaning to produce new meaning.The paper also builds up the macro and micro product design process models.Finally,the study has further research on some concepts and relationships and it also points out that the relationship between designer and user is not only the serve and be served but also lead and led.Meanwhile,society gives more responsibility to enterprises.Enterprise should not only focus on the reform of technology and it should take the mission and task to explore all kinds of relationship between people and outside world.