Integrating a Cross-Reference List and Customer Journey Map to Improve Industrial Design Teaching and Learning in “Project-Oriented Design Based Learning”

To train students’ practical ability in design, enterprise projects are often introduced into the industrial design courses of Chinese universities. However, such project-oriented learning activity (POA) is often not well designed. This not only makes it difficult to improve learning effectiveness, but also may bring the unpleasant learning experience to students. The learning experience and learning effectiveness are equally important, and they are mutually conditional and complementary. To consider both, POA needs to be elaborately designed. To this end, a variety of mature POA organization forms, such as project-based learning (PBL), design-based learning (DBL), and project-oriented design-based learning (PODBL), are discussed firstly. PODBL integrates and inherits the advantages of other learning models, and it has been preliminarily proved to improve the learning effectiveness of engineering design courses. Therefore, a cross-reference list was proposed for upgrading POA to PODBL. A lamp design course was developed based on this checklist and students were organized to study. The customer journey map tool was used to analyze the learning experience of students in the course journey, and the emotions and pain points were obtained, as well as some critical factors leading to a positive learning experience. Finally, to demonstrate the availability of the cross-reference list and critical factors, a baby strollers design project course was developed and participants were interviewed. The results show that the cross-reference list and critical factors could improve learning effectiveness and enhance the learning experience significantly.