Synopsis

According to the feedback of interviewed enterprises, modern Chinese design education can not meet practical demands for cultivating three levels of design expertise. Three main solutions, which implied three levels of designer’s knowledge: skills, rules and experience, were utilised in practice to bridge the gap.

On the other hand, Kao Gong Ji has partly contributes to the advanced handicrafts industry of China and is considered as the main material for training handicraftsmen, whose knowledge also consists of the similar three levels as modern designer. In this instance, a comparison between the two education systems is applied in this study. The objective is to discover solution of improving Chinese design education by establishing its own education model.

---

In contemporary China, design education is often critiqued for being separated from practice, lacking connection with local conditions, and being limited in theory-orientation.

This is considered to be a result of borrowed design theories and education models from foreign countries, such as Germany, UK, U.S., and Japan. In this instance, design management is introduced by Chinese educators as an efficient solution to bridge the gap between design education and practice. However, its effect is doubtful because similarly to design education, its theories and knowledge system are still borrowed from foreign countries without any relations with local conditions. So how to improve design education in China efficiently and how to view the role of design management - these are issues needing to be clarified. Only by doing this can Chinese designers upgrade their own quality and create more value for businesses based on their improved personal knowledge system, which tightly connects the practice and local conditions.

Since the Chinese handicrafts industry has led the world for around 2500 years, partly because of its associated and systemic training tradition, a comparative study was conducted to identify the successful factors which have contributed to its success and apply the findings to accelerate the improvement of the modern design education system in China. The rationale for this comparison was based on the similar characteristics of the two education systems: Chinese people as learners and the need for greater connections between design education and local Chinese conditions. The objective of this paper was therefore to improve the recognition of the modern design education system and find a way to upgrade it, based upon the comparative study of handicraft education. Through a study of successful experience and factors in education of handicraft industry, the deficiencies and problems of current Chinese design education could be identified. Then the successful factors can be introduced into modern Chinese design education as an efficient way to solve the problems.

Want to read more? Download the full paper (PDF - 119KB).*

---

*This paper has been provided for educational purposes may not be republished without permission from the author.

About the author

Xihui Liu (Sylvia Liu) joined HKPolyU as a PhD candidate at School of Design in 2007. Prior to this, she was design manager in NOVA DESIGN and responsible for the management of the design department and design projects. The clients she has serviced include GM, YAMAHA, Faw, Kinglong, SYM, Zongshen, Siemens, Electrolux, Haier, Hisense, CNC, Midea, BBK, Konka. Xihui Liu received her Master of Art degree from Southern Yangtze University and her bachelor's degree from Nanjing University of Science & Technology in China. Her current research is focused on design and business, i.e. the design capacity in Chinese SMEs and models of outsourcing design in China.

Xihui Liu
PhD School of Design
Hong Kong Polytechnic University Hung Hom
Kowloon, Hong Kong
t: +011 852 6185 7589
f: +011 852 2774 5067
e: