A Study of Self-Evaluation of an Industrial Design on Efficiency

• Main Authors: Li-Li Kao, 高麗麗
• Other Authors: Ming-Chuen Chuang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2003
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/58677509985244968132

碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 應用藝術所 === 91 === The items usually used to appraise the achievement of an industrial designer, at present, can be categorized into two parts, the evaluation appraised by the design manager and evaluation by the designer himself. The self-evaluation is appraised on the base of the work achievement in the prior year; a designer evaluates his or her performance by using some criteria, such as working attitude, design achievement, and learning attitude, etc. Due to the specialty of design profession, some discrepancy can be found between the manager’s and designer s’ perception on design achievement; moreover, the discrepancy is not totally “causal driven.” Designers’ self-appraisement on achievement may clearly reflect the bottleneck they have met on a design project, and the self-awareness of themselves. This reflection is important for design managers to better understand and communicate with the front-line designers. The goal of this study is to reveal the designers’ and the managers’ attitudes and opinions on the approach of achievement appraising and self-evaluation, with respect to design divisions of different types and scales. The in-depth interview was implemented mainly in this study. According to the well prepared interview guide with a list of relevant questions, a series of interviews to design managers as well as industrial designers of different companies were conducted, respectively, to understand their attitudes and opinions on the approach of achievement appraising and self-evaluation currently adopted in their own company. The interviewees include mangers and designers from the industrial design departments at four information and appliance manufacturing companies and the mangers and designers of three design companies. Additionally, in order to reveal an overall situation of self-evaluation on achievement of an industrial designer conducted in Taiwan, the evaluation forms and contents used in various companies were collected and analyzed. Based on the result of the analysis of the interviews and evaluation formats, some principles for establishing an appropriate approach for self-evaluation on industrial designer were summarized. Then, a design department of manufacturing company was selected to verify the applicability of these principles. Finally, these principles were further revised according to the result of verification, and the conclusion and suggestion of this study were concluded. The result of this research was summarized as follows: (1) The approaches of self-evaluation among design organizations are quite different, and are not flawless in Taiwan; (2) The self-evaluation as part of the achievement appraising system in a corporation is conditioned by the organization and magnitude of the company in general; and the magnitude of design companies in Taiwan are too small to institutionalize a self-evaluation system; (3) The self-evaluation is treated more as “developmental tools” than “evaluation tools” by all design organizations investigated in this study; (4) The “feedback” response to self-evaluation is essential for mutual understanding the discrepancy between the managers and designers on achievement appraising and for filling the gap of this discrepancy; (5) Regarding the type of evaluation items in the self-evaluation form, quantitative evaluation were expected to be used for “evaluation tools” aspect of a self-evaluation system, whereas items with open and descriptive response were expected for “developmental tools” aspect.