Philosophical Thinking In The Field Of Industrial Design

Industrial products pour into our lives after Industrial Revolution, which greatly changes our living styles and the forms of our society. And the products will have impacts on the environment during their production, transportation, sales, use and retirement. Industrial design is the process of planning and embodiment of a product. It has important influence on the outcome of the product, so it is of vital importance to the development of the society and the environment. But unfortunately, the practices of industrial design surpass the development of design theories. At the early stage of industrial design, the theories of design merely contributed to solving the problems from a particular view, which didn't regard the influence of products to the society and the environment. The society develops blindly, bringing us huge material wealth but creating much damage to the environment and the society.Industrial design is a broadly based activity, having much to do with social sciences, literae humaniores and natural sciences. It is important to measure industrial design from the man's, the society's and the environment's view, while can't measure it merely from the product's or the man's view. There is an obvious tendency in industrial design field to consider the system,"product-man-society-environment", as a whole, of which the product is a part. Industrial design should take the system's view to keep it developing harmoniously so as to make the society and the environment develop side by side, instead of taking only part of the system as its target.This thesis is mainly developed from the Chinese traditional culture, and regards harmonious design as the centre of the philosophy of design. Harmonious design makes it important to consider the man's, the society's and the environment's requests harmoniously in order to keep the system developing harmoniously. The designer is vital to the outcome of the industrial design, so his experience, accomplishment and responsibility are important to industrial design. The designer's responsibility is expected here to make the designer responsible for his design. And it is also important to strengthen the government's functions and improve the approvement to harmonious design of the masses.