The influence of national policies on the evolution of industrial design education in China

Abstract

This study systematically describes research trends of “industrial design education in China” using bibliometrics mapping from 1992 to 2021. This study aims to sort out industrial design education's historical flow in China and analyze its intrinsic links with Chinese national policies. A combination of quantitative and qualitative methods is used to describe and analyze this study. A technique that combines policy historical analysis with a bibliometric review based on Citespace's knowledge mapping is used in this research. The study was conducted on 492 ″Industrial Design Education” papers included in the core collection database of the China National Knowledge Infrastructure between 1992 and 2021. The results obtained from this study are 1) Research on industrial design education in China has grown steadily over the past three decades and remained high-quality level; 2) The three main research themes are “Chinese culture,” “interdisciplinary cooperation” and “government, industry, academia and research” cooperation; 3) Innovation and entrepreneurship, evaluation system, Interdisciplinary, new engineering, and new liberal arts are the research hot spots of Chinese core journals; 4) Interdisciplinary construction in the context of new engineering, assessment system research in the context of high-quality development, and innovation and entrepreneurship education in the context of creative industry development are the future research directions.

1. Introduction

As a practical and innovative major, industrial design is closely related to the country's economic strength and industrial construction [1]. As more and more countries realize the importance of industrial design in enhancing national core competitiveness [2], more than 20 countries have incorporated industrial design development into their national development strategies [3]. The relevant research and practice of industrial design education have played a considerable role in the development story, which is becoming part of the national strategy. The need for national development will dominate the development direction of industrial design education. The early development paths of developed countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Finland, and Japan confirm this.

The British government established the UK Design Council in 1944 to encourage investment in design education projects. Its strategies, such as the “UK National Design Strategy” and “The Good Design Plan 2008–2011,” continue to lead the development of design education and industry [4]; In the United States: In pursuit of the commercial value of design-driven high-end technological innovation, the government has long adopted a national design promotion plan aimed at supporting the development of design institutions and innovative means of design education. It mainly includes the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the “Federal Graphics Promotion Program,” the “Federal Design Promotion Program,” and the “Design Elite Program” from 1972 to 1981. Its industrial design education system has distinctive professional characteristics, focus on design practice, and organically combines production, education, and research, cultivating students' abilities to think innovation and hands-on training; In Germany: The German Design Council, established in 1953, is the highest government agency in German design-related affairs. The government has always paid attention to the close integration of design education and enterprises. The Bauhaus School of Design, established in 1919, and the Ulm School of Design, established in 1953, have promoted German and world design [5]. The Finnish government has always regarded design as an international strategy to promote economic, cultural, and commercial development. In the 1950s, the “Designing a Nation” policy was established, which made Finnish design come after the Nordic countries. Later, national policy outlines such as “Design Leading Outline” and “Design 2005″ were formulated to promote the internationalization of design education, complementing university and vocational education, and form a unique design education system [6]. In 2003, the Japanese government proposed some strategies with the core of “Japan National Design Programme” to promote the development of industrial design. The talent incentive and training plan was established, which focuses on international exchanges, pays attention to the cultural concept of the country in the practice process, and emphasizes the regional cultural characteristics. In terms of teaching content and curriculum setting, colleges and universities also have complete autonomy, encourage practical teaching, and implement the teaching mode of combining classroom and factory [7]; Therefore, it is of great significance to understand the development path and future trend of China's industrial design education under the guidance of national policies.

With the in-depth development of China's reform and opening-up strategy (1978), their economic and industrial policies and models were optimized continuously. The first batch of industrial design majors represented by the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts (1980), Central Academy of Arts and Crafts (1984), and Jiangnan University (1985) were established in colleges. During this period, the Ministry of Education of China officially listed industrial design in the professional teaching catalog in 1986. In the same year, the Department of Education established the Industrial Design Professional Teaching Steering Committee, and the government began to guide and coordinate industrial design education in engineering colleges. The China Industrial Designers Association, established in 1987, is a good communication platform among government officials, art educators, designers, and entrepreneurs. After more than 40 years of professional construction by scholars, China's industrial design education has developed rapidly. China has become a “big country” for cultivating industrial design talents. Table 1 shows the historical ranking of QS in design major of major research institutions in relevant regions, most of which have ranked among the top 100 universities in the world.

Table 1.

QS partial World University Rankings by design subject (2015–2022）.

Country & Region	University	Ranking
		2015	2016	2017	2018	2019	2020	2021	2022
United Kingdom	Royal College of Art	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
	University of the Arts London	8	5	6	6	2	2	2	2
	The Glasgow School of Art	10	20	19	16	8	8	= 8	11
	Goldsmiths, University of London	12	11	15	12	11	14	= 15	18
	Loughborough University	40	38	36	34	28	24	31	27
	University of Oxford	13	15	11	= 36	37	30	36	35
Italy	Politecnico di Milano	11	10	= 7	5	6	6	5	5
Finland	Aalto University	14	17	13	9	7	7	6	6
Netherlands	Design Academy Eindhoven	19	18	= 31	= 24	19	18	12	= 9
	Delft University of Technology	–	–	–	–	–	–	11	13
Denmark	The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts	–	77	74	27	20	21	22	19
Sweden	Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts, and Design	64	= 41	47	60	= 49	33	21	= 20
Switzerland	Zurich University of the Arts	–	–	–	200	100	45	35	32
Germany	Universität der Künste Berlin	86	88	132	88	= 49	40	= 41	= 33
France	École Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle, ENSCI Les Ateliers	= 32	59	107	= 49	= 24	22	26	= 33
United States	Parsons School of Design at The New School	2	4	3	2	3	3	= 3	3
	Rhode Island School of Design (RISD)	3	3	4	3	4	4	= 3	4
	Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)	4	2	2	4	5	5	4	8
	Pratt Institute	5	6	5	7	10	10	= 8	7
	School of the Art Institute of Chicago	6	7	= 7	8	9	9	7	= 9
	California Institute of the Arts	7	= 12	9	15	21	20	17	= 22
	Stanford University	17	= 8	10	10	= 14	16	19	29
	Yale University	15	= 8	12	29	29	= 34	37	40
	Carnegie Mellon University	16	= 13	14	13	17	17	18	17
	Art Center College of Design	9	= 19	16	14	13	12	10	14
	University of California, Los Angeles	18	= 13	18	20	= 31	39	46	46
	Columbia University	21	= 24	20	30	33	= 34	41	42
Australia	RMIT University	20	16	17	11	12	11	= 15	15
	The University of Technology Sydney	96	31	= 29	28	23	23	25	= 27
	Monash University	50	67	34	64	= 49	67	72	74
	Queensland University of Technology	–	72	41	= 43	41	77	48	83
	Swinburne University of Technology	73	32	72	= 40	42	43	83	86
	The University of New South Wales	25	29	33	= 31	44	48	85	90
	The University of Melbourne	49	37	28	38	34	49	84	89
Singapore	National University of Singapore (NUS)	38	27	35	39	= 31	30	28	31
	Nanyang Technological University (NTU)	= 45	48	40	= 40	39	37	43	36
China (Mainland)	Tongji University	–	= 34	26	= 18	14	13	13	12
	Tsinghua University	26	23	25	23	18	19	23	= 20
	China Central Academy of Fine Arts	–	55	53	54	27	28	24	= 22
	Peking University	68	30	37	47	74	74	76	80
	Shanghai Jiao Tong University	28	= 46	70	73	78	79	127	85
	Zhejiang University	–	–	100	100	99	= 100	150	151

In the existing research on China's industrial design education, scholars' perspectives are divided into macro-level and micro-level. The macro-level analysis includes market economy, industrial policy, national strategy, etc. Such as industrial design industry policy (Juanjuan Wang, 2014), national strategy, and the development of China's design industry [8]. These studies help scholars to grasp the external environment and macro direction of China's industrial design education. The research at the micro level mainly includes the theoretical practice, subject system, and teaching mode of industrial design education, such as the theory of the industrial design education system with Chinese characteristics [9] and; Comprehensive Education Model [10]. These studies help scholars understand the internal mechanism and external environment of industrial design education. Still, it is difficult for scholars to clarify the relationship between the two and even more difficult for scholars to conduct further research. Therefore, this paper proposes a research method of industrial design education from the mesoscopic perspective. It mainly includes its educational strategy, development concept, educational technology, and development trend under current policy, economy, technology, and social environment. It expounds on the main development paths of China's industrial design education in each stage of development in response to the adjustment of national industrial policies during the rapid growth of China's industrial economy. The research of this article provides a reference for the development paradigm of today's international industrial design education.

This paper proposes a research method combining bibliometric analysis, visual analysis, and national policy. It comprehensively describes the knowledge landscape of the research field by combining bibliometric analysis and visualizing the network. Such as keywords co-occurrence networks, clustering networks, cooperation networks between institutions and authors, etc., help to understand the knowledge structure of disciplines, scientific research cooperation, research status, hot frontiers, research trends, and dynamic evolution of knowledge. Bibliometric data is helpful for scholars to compare and determine the gap and transition of different research stages. The correspondence between hot research spots and government policy keywords was constructed by analyzing specific national policy measures in different periods. Therefore, this paper proposes to apply CiteSpace to systematically sort out the interaction between government policies and the development of the education industry. Through a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis, the study concretely conveys conceptual changes in the development of industrial design education in China. It predicts future research trends in industrial design education in China and its role in promoting and reforming international industrial design education. The main objectives of this study are as follows:

• (1)To understand the relevant research strength of China's industrial design education from the level of publishing journals, publishing institutions, and scholars.
• (2)To clarify the evolution path of China's industrial design education in stages.
• (3)To analyze the relationship between China's industrial policy and industrial design education.
• (4)To discover the emerging keywords and central themes of China's industrial design education research and predict main trends in the future.

2. Methodology

With the explosive growth of scientific literature, the subjectivity and one-sidedness of traditional literature review methods have become increasingly prominent. Most previous research used subjective methods to summarize the earlier work, understand the current level, analyze the existing problems, and propose possible research questions and development directions. Under the premise of ensuring the objectivity of literature data, this paper comprehensively applies bibliometric analysis and knowledge map analysis to ensure the scientific nature of the research review [11]. It combines qualitative and quantitative methods to summarize China's industrial design education research.

2.1. Application of bibliometrics

Bibliometrics is the quantitative analysis of various types of literature data to discover potential laws in many literature data [12]. It was first formally proposed by Alan Pritchard in 1969 [13]. Its evaluation indicators include the number and year of publications, citation frequency, impact factor, centrality, etc. The main advantages of bibliometric analysis are: (1) The process of bibliometrics is time-consuming and low-cost; (2) The data of bibliometrics is objective and can avoid the influence of potential bias; (3) The evaluation results are reliable and internationally accessible; (4) The evaluation results can be directly used by non-academic stakeholders or those in other fields. However, due to the high complexity and uncertainty of the literature system, many literature problems are challenging to quantify. The limitations of relying solely on bibliometric analysis are (1)The Inability to examine potential future impacts and the latest knowledge; (2)The Inability to examine different types of publications in a balanced manner; (3) Not applicable to all disciplines; (4) Inability to examine research and the social impact of researchers, etc. [14].

2.2. Application of knowledge map

The Knowledge graph is an emerging interdisciplinary approach to quantitative analysis. It applies visualization techniques to describe complex knowledge domains. By mining, analyzing, constructing, drawing, and displaying knowledge and their correlations and revealing the dynamic development law of knowledge fields, knowledge graphs provide practical and valuable references for disciplinary research [15]. Currently, widely used knowledge graph software includes Vosviewer, CiteSpace, HistCite, Ucinet, etc. The CiteSpace selected in this article is a literature data visualization software developed by the team of Professor Chaomei Chen of Drexel University [16]. The advantages of CiteSpace are: (1) Information visualization technology can be used to convert literature data from abstract data to intuitive scientific knowledge graphs; (2) To show the relationship and influence among countries, institutions, scholars, etc.; (3) To help scholars summarize research Status quo, marking outbreak hotspots, and then predicting future research hotspots and trends [17]. But CiteSpace also has certain limitations: (1) It is significantly impacted by the literature data and has higher requirements for literature screening; (2) It is impossible to examine different types of literature in a balanced manner; (3) The measurement algorithm is relatively simple, etc. [18].

2.3. Research materials and framework

We searched and compared different databases (Web of Science, Scopus, Eric, CNKI.) and finally chose China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), which is most relevant to China's industrial design education research, as the database source. This website is considered China's most authoritative and comprehensive bibliographic indexing tool [19]. To ensure the typical representation and research value of the research results in the field of social sciences, the author determined that the data sources are mainly from CSSCI and core journals with high standardization and rigor in CNKI. The advanced retrieval setting is (education + teaching + curriculum + major) * industrial design, as shown in Table 2, and a total of 682 kinds of literature were selected. After intensively reading the literature abstracts, the literature with low relevance to the research was eliminated. Finally, 492 literature data with high significance and representativeness were obtained and taken as the data samples for the next step of bibliometric analysis.

Table 2.

Data settings for the search.

Search Settings	elements	Parameter Settings	elements
Data source	CSSCI, Core Journals, EI	Time Slicing	1992.1–2021.12
Search Keywords	(Education + Teaching + Curriculum) * Industrial Design	Year Per Slice	6
Type of Literature	Academic journals	Node Types	Author; Institution; Keyword
Number of documents	492	G-index	25
time interval	1992–2021	TopN	50
Date of search	2022.8.28	TopN%	15

Scientifically applying bibliometric methods and knowledge visualization, and using CiteSpace software to obtain more comprehensive data, is an effective way to conduct a macro analysis of a specific subject area. Microsoft Excel 2016 was used to analyze the annual distribution of literature and significant published journals. Among them, the IF index is introduced into the study to quantitatively evaluate published journals' academic productivity and influence. A knowledge map based on “research institutions, scholars, keywords” is established through the visual representation of CiteSpace, quantitatively conveying its inherent relationship characteristics. Research helps scholars scientifically and objectively review, summarize, and predict development trends in the research field. CiteSpace is used to visualize and analyze the knowledge map of Chinese industrial design education literature in this study. The specific parameter settings are shown in Table 1. The research route is as follows (Fig. 1): First, the research analyzes the primary data of the literature samples to understand the rate and time distribution of papers published, the source and volume of journals, and scientific research cooperation; Secondly, through the functions of keyword time zone, co-occurrence, the research is divided into stages, and the key research themes and evolution of each step are reviewed and analyzed, to understand the dynamic changes of research hotspots. Finally, the knowledge map is summarized according to the current research status, and the future development trend is explored.

Fig. 1.

Research road map.

3. Results

3.1. Analysis of the annual distribution of literature

The total number of articles published in the literature in different years is an essential indicator of the trends in each study [20]. The annual distribution of its number provides a visual indication of the current state of development of the study in the area [21]. Therefore, combined with the construction history of the industrial design profession, this paper selects the literature from 1992 to 2021 to draw a line graph of the annual distribution of research literature on industrial design education in China (Fig. 2). The first core paper on industrial design education in CNKI came in 1992. Since then, related research has been widely carried out in the academic field and has shown a steady growth trend but showed a prominent turnaround at several unique points in time. It is proved that the number of relevant publications was low until the first peak when there was a surge in 2002. After 2006, the research literature rose again and reached the height of 34 articles in 2011. After that, the number of publications remained stable (20–30), except for 2017, when the number of publications was 15.

Fig. 2.

Annual distribution of literature.

According to the above figure, the trend and inflection point of research articles are closely related to the requirements of industrial design education under the national strategy. For example, in 2002, based on the 40-year development of China's industrial design education and China's entry into the WTO, the research and discussions on “Industrial Design Education Reform in the New Century” and “Coping with the Opportunities and Challenges of Entering the WTO” were launched in the academic [22]. In 2010, the State Council issued “The Report on the Work of the Government,” which proposed to deepen “reform and opening up” and promote residents' consumption. “The Guidance Opinions on Promoting the Development of Industrial Design,” issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other Ministries, provided a significant development opportunity for the construction of industrial design majors and educational research in universities. In 2017, the 19th National Congress proposed the “high-quality development " discourse, and the education sector actively promoted the construction of new engineering disciplines and explored the strategy of strengthening higher education.

3.2. Analysis of the core journals

Changes in the journal sources of the literature and their volume represent changes in the knowledge structure in the field. It is significant for scholars to provide an efficient reference for scientific research and help identify research hotspots in this field [23]. Based on this, the journal information was regulated, and it found that ten journals published many research documents related to industrial design education. The journals cover many specials, including humanities and social sciences, engineering technology, information technology, etc., reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of industrial design education. From Table 3, we can group journal-related research topics into three categories: Research centered on Chinese culture (Decoration, Journal of Nanjing University of the Arts, Art observation, Art design research, etc.); Research centered on interdisciplinary cooperation (Packaging Engineering, Journal of Graphics, Mechanical Design, etc.); Researches centered on “Politics, Industry, Research, and Learning” (Education and Vocational, Higher Engineering Education Research, Educational Theory, and Practice, etc.). Among them, Decoration is the most popular CSSCI journal for China's industrial design education research. Its publication volume accounts for 27% of the total data, indicating that its publications have a more significant academic influence. They are followed by Packaging Engineering, Journal of Nanjing University of the Arts, Education, and Vocation. The number of papers published in these three journals is equal. Further analysis of IF (impact factor) shows that it is higher than the average in philosophy, humanities, and social sciences. They are also higher than 1.0 in the specialties of social science, engineering technology, and information technology. It shows that these journals have a strong academic influence on China's industrial design education research.

Table 3.

Top 10 issues of journals.

Ranking	Periodical	Number of documents	IF (composite)
1	Decorate	133	0.875
2	Packaging Engineering	32	0.966
3	Journal of Nanjing Art Institute (Art and Design)	27	0.602
4	Education and career	27	1.568
5	Journal of Graphology	16	1.472
6	Fine Arts Watch	15	0.224
7	Mechanical design	14	1.133
8	Research in Higher Engineering Education	9	4.233
9	Educational Theory and Practice	8	1.394
10	Art and Design Studies	5	0.547

3.3. Analysis of the core institutions and authors

The number of collaborative scientific publications represents the research level and actual contribution of different regions, universities, and research institutions. By analyzing the relationship network of collaborating authors and institutions in a field, it is possible to quickly understand the distribution of major research forces and research collaborations in the area [24]. CiteSpace is applied to generate the research cooperation map of industrial design education research in China (Fig. 3, Fig. 4). The larger nodes in the map represent more articles published by the research institution in the research field. The color of the connecting lines corresponds to the timeline spectrum above, and the yellow color indicates the more recent time of cooperation emergence.

Fig. 3.

Mapping of research institution partnerships.

Fig. 4.

Mapping of scholar collaborations.

As is shown in the figure: the density values of the network are 0.0015 and 0.0021, and the maximum co-cited nodes are 13 and 9, respectively, accounting for about 3% and 1%, indicating that there is less cooperation between research scholars and institutions. The scientific research power is very scattered, and the trend of collaboration between institutions is not apparent. As can be seen from the connection of nodes and the color of lemon yellow, trends in scientific research cooperation also begin to appear between research institutions. It is shown that there is a network of academic research cooperation, including the Academy of Fine Arts of Tsinghua University and the Nanjing Art Institute. Still, overall, there is no closely linked research cooperation relationship.

3.4. Analysis of the research hotspots

The research hotspot is a topic of common interest to many research scholars and institutions. A keyword in the literature is a high-level summary of the research topic. Therefore, keyword co-occurrence mapping and time zone maps are often used to show the dynamic distribution of hotspots in the research field [25]. As shown in Fig. 5, the five-time slices with a more obvious state of keyword cluster are selected for analysis to objectively present the keyword evolution process and help scholars clarify the updates and mutual influences of research hotspots.

• 1)Analysis of co-occurrence keywords.

Fig. 5.

Mapping of keywords time zone.

In keyword co-occurrence mapping, the measurement of the degree of connection between a keyword and other keywords is centrality. The higher the centrality, the more critical it is in the research stage and closely associated with other keywords. With the help of CiteSpace's Summary Table, we list the hot words and their centrality in different historical stages of industrial design research and combine them with the content of national strategic policies of industrial design [26]. As shown in Fig. 6, the research themes and corresponding hot points of industrial design education are interpreted in stages from the policy perspective.

Fig. 6.

Synchronous relationship diagram of policy keywords and industrial design keywords.

In the first stage (1992–1997), along with the convening of the 14th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, which established the goal of building a socialist market economy. The market factor became the primary concern of enterprises and economic sectors. Therefore, industrial design and its education also received more and more attention. For example, the industrial design department of Hunan University (1993) proposed a close integration of industry, academia, and research to serve enterprises and the market; Binhai Du (1997) even suggested actively accelerating the exploration of the “trinity” model of government, enterprises, and education, to promote the coordinated development of enterprises and institutions. In the National Conference on Industrial Design held in the same year, scholars conducted specific and in-depth discussions on the connotation of industrial design, talent training strategy, computer-aided design CAID, etc. For example, Anxiang Zhao (1995), based on explaining the definition and characteristics of industrial design, made suggestions for promoting industrial design education and development from the perspectives of development funds, talent training, concept popularization, innovation, etc. Shilie Weng (1993) expounded the contradictions between design education and economic construction from three aspects: college admissions and graduation employment, specialized teaching mode and talent demand, professional structure, and industrial structure. He also discussed integrating talent training with the socialist market economy from three perspectives: school-running system, professional structure mechanism, and sino-foreign cooperation in running schools. With the convening of the 15th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, scholars review the work of the past five years, face the new requirements of economic system reform and economic development strategies, and actively promote “The Reform Plan of Teaching Content and Curriculum System for the 21st Century”, and study and explore the industrial design education system with Chinese characteristics. For example, Hunan University has investigated the laws of design education with Chinese characteristics and, for the first time, formulated design teaching plans, contents, and methods applicable to China's higher education institutions; Xiaoyue Zhu (1997) re-examined the inherited dualistic model of Bauhaus design education in China and proposed a new level of research and exploration in the context of specific national conditions.

In the second stage (1998–2003), with the continuous exploration and promotion of industrial design education in China, the Ministry of Education promulgated “The Introduction to Undergraduate Majors in General Higher Education Schools” in 1998 formally defined industrial design as a mechanical major. The construction of industrial design in engineering colleges and universities became a hot spot for scholars' research, mainly including three aspects of discipline exploration, talent training, and curriculum practice. In terms of discipline exploration, Renke He (2002), based on the investigation of industrial design reform at home and abroad, proposed that the trend of industrial design education in China is to take the road of synthesis and put forward suggestions such as tutorial system, modular teaching, optional minor [10]. Regarding talent training, Jigang Pei (2002) put forward ideas and initiatives for building practical, composite, and creative modern industrial design talents from the perspectives of curriculum setting, design means, and graduation inspection. In 2001, based on the implementation of China's “Tenth Five-Year Plan” and the accession to the WTO, China's market economy changed, and the national consumption and life consciousness became increasingly mature, mainly regarding social consumption structure and enterprise innovation consciousness [27]. During this period, industrial design education paid more attention to the consumption structure of consumers, the design ethics of designers, and design innovation. For example, Zhiyi Fu (2002) proposed that industrial design education should be an education of correct values. Designers should pay more attention to social behavior and cultural actions while focusing on design capability and guiding consumption more while serving the market. Hanqing Chen (2000) summarizes domestic design education's challenges and existing deficiencies and proposes establishing an education system centered on design innovation to cultivate high-quality, innovative design talents.

In the third stage (2004–2009), although industrial design education and its promotion developed rapidly, most domestic institutions largely followed the traditional art education model, neglecting the relationship between industrial design education and industrial demand combination, reflecting the structural imbalance between the supply side of industrial design education and industrial demand side in China [28]. In this context, “The Eleventh Five-Year Plan of National Economic and Social Development” in 2006 emphasized the professionalization requirements of the industrial design profession and talent training. During this period, engineering design colleges combined their professional characteristics. They formed their unique ideas of industrial design education development from the advantages of their disciplines, and their comprehensive road was mainly from the perspective of teaching mode, teaching curriculum, talent training, and innovation. For example, In the face of the mismatch between educational output and industrial demand in industrial design education, it has become a consensus to improve the training of professional design talents [29]. Guoqiang Wu (2005) explores the theoretical and practical aspects of the integrated teaching mode of industrial design in terms of subject structure, subject content, curriculum links, faculty structure, and teaching guidance. Ning Ma (2008) discussed the reform and existing problems of the practical teaching system from the positive direction for students, different forms of practical teaching, and the disciplinary knowledge system of practical topics. Jinguang Wang (2009) proposes a “learning-teaching” motivation model to stimulate students' sense of protagonist, and takes product development design as an example to cultivate students' innovative capacity from the perspective of human-centered concept, product core value, and cultural connotation.

In the fourth stage (2010–2015), industrial design education had ushered in a brand-new phase since 2010, when the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly issued “Some Guidelines on Promoting the Development of Industrial Design.” The government encourages universities to establish an education and talent training system that benefits the comprehensive growth of talent. However, due to the diversified industrial design education environment, a single educational paradigm cannot solve the fundamental problems of industrial design education. After that, industrial design education in China moved towards a dual-track system: industrial design (a mechanical discipline) and product design (an art discipline) [30]. Scholars began to integrate resources to promote innovation from the perspectives of institutional characteristics, regional economy and culture, and local enterprises and technology. For example, the Department of Industrial Design at Tsinghua University's Academy of Fine Arts has built a “T or M″-shaped undergraduate curriculum to enhance students' vertical professional competence, horizontal design integration ability, and interdisciplinary knowledge integration ability. Hunan University College of Design and Art established an international teaching mechanism and a new digital teaching mode and founded three directions for intelligent manufacturing in 2025, Internet+, digital media, and service design. In 2014–2015, the State Council released policies such as “Several Opinions on Promoting the Integrated Development of Cultural and Creative and Design Services and Related Industries “and “Made in China 2025″ to promote the integration of design education and industry integration development and accelerate the shift to China creation. Scholars have launched a lot of research and discussions to cultivate comprehensive and specialized talents better, optimize the transition of industrial design talents to industry, and promote the high-quality development of innovation and entrepreneurship. For example, Hu Yin (2014) proposed to integrate curriculum resources, center on industrial design, and center on subject projects, teaching, discussion, reflection, practice, etc., to help students develop comprehensive professional abilities. Based on the perspective of cultural resources and industrial development, Lusheng Pan (2014) emphasizes the importance of cultural heritage in the development of the design education system and schooling characteristics, which provides a new perspective for constructing professional characteristics of universities in different regions. Yong Wang et al. (2015) proposes the construction of a curriculum system from the standpoint of talent training needs to solve the problem that the existing education and traditional teaching mode are not suitable for engineering students to learn, which provides the reform of fundamental curriculum in engineering colleges and universities provides a new direction.

In the fifth stage (2016–2021), marked by the 13th Five-Year Plan, industrial design education will enter a strategic phase under the guidance of the national strategy. With the continuous promotion of the innovation-driven development strategy and the implementation of major strategies such as “Made in China” and “Internet+," the new economic form also foreshadows a more comprehensive and higher quality talent demand and a new round of education reform. Echoing the national strategy, the Ministry of Education proposed in 2017 to promote the construction of “new engineering” and carry out teaching reform and innovation, which has led to extensive research and practice in the academic field. For example, Hunan University has carried out the curriculum reform of “New Engineering” based on the module system. Its graduation design results under the “New Engineering” reform cover many industries, reflecting different module characteristics and cutting-edge technical attributes. In 2020, inter-discipline will become the 14th discipline category. In the face of emerging technologies and cross-disciplines, the Nanjing Academy of Art has launched a joint institutional effort to explore a new teaching system for industrial design that integrates art and technology and introduces talents to be trained independently before cross-disciplinary training. In 2021, the Ministry of Education will comprehensively promote the “new liberal arts” and build a liberal arts talent training system of world-level and Chinese characteristics. The academic community has carried out many practices. For example, Youhai Mi (2021) analyzes the background of discipline development and the dilemma. He explores Chinese characteristics from interdisciplinary attributes, professional layout, talent training, curriculum system, etc. Jing Zhang (2022) takes computer-aided design courses as an example and builds an online and offline hybrid education method, an exploration and reference for traditional curriculum innovation in the context of the “new liberal arts” era.

• 2)Analysis of burst keywords

Based on the burst strength, analysis of burst keywords indicates the rise and fall of research hot spots. We organize the burst table of different time zones exported by CiteSpace, as shown in Table 4, where each rectangle corresponds to a year, and the red bolded rectangle indicates the time of that keyword emergence.

Table 4.

Keywords with the most vigorous citation bursts.

From 1996 to 1997, studying “school philosophy” was a hot research topic in this period. Since the establishment of industrial design majors in key universities in China around 1993, comprehensive universities in China have opened industrial design majors in colleges of Engineering and schools of Art and Design, respectively. With the deepening of “Reform and Opening-up,” the role of the market economy is expanding, the competition between the domestic market and the international market is becoming increasingly acute, and the development of industrial design education is facing opportunities and challenges. How to integrate into the national economic growth was the main problem. Therefore, the training objectives, training level, teaching ideas, and methods became the most concerning issues for education practitioners.

From 2002 to 2003, the discipline construction of the School of Design and training students' creative thinking gradually became the research focus. With many domestic manufacturing enterprises participating in the international market competition, more and more engineering colleges open industrial design majors, and the design practice experience of the graduates has triggered a reflection on design education. To keep up with the development of the world's industrial design, in the face of the “art” and “technology” dualism of the teaching mode, the reform of industrial design education is imperative. The development of humanistic thinking and creative thinking skills, design and practice skills, and courses related to this issue have become significant issues to be considered.

From 2004 to 2009, the research content shows a shift from theoretical reform to practical validation, from constructing an integrated teaching system to specific teaching practices in engineering institutions. After joining the WTO, China's industrial development faces the problem of insufficient international competitiveness and low production value. The rapid growth of the domestic manufacturing industry has also caused the problem of serious homogenization of products. Cultivating innovative professionals with practical skills and creative qualities has become the primary goal of industrial design education development.

From 2010 to 2015, the study showed three stages of teaching reform-teaching practice and teaching innovation. From 2010 to 2012, factors such as the industrial design industry and regional economy became the hot spots of education reform and talent cultivation concerns. In 2012–2013, facing the contradiction between industrial demand and scholarly output, the cultivation of composite talents became the focus of teaching practice during this period. In 2013–2015, based on the previous reform practices, scholars relied on technological innovation to explore the special teaching mode suitable for local institutions.

From 2016 to 2021, the study is divided into three intervals: innovation and entrepreneurship education guided by national policy, education assessment system, and new engineering discipline. Combined with the keyword clustering results, this is related to the national strategy of industrial design, the general trend of “Made in China” to “Created in China,” and the gradual exploration of the industrial design education system based on China's national conditions.

• 3)Analysis of clustering keywords

Analysis of clustering keywords refers to clustering closely related words into a group by applying clustering algorithms to the data. In this case, the clustering labels then indicate the common research themes of the keywords. In clustering mapping, generally, when Q > 0.3 and S ≥ 0.5, the clustered data is reliable and has research value. The result indicates that this cluster has high confidence (Q= 0.7104, S= 0.9077). The specific clustering information is shown in Fig. 7 and Table 5.

Fig. 7.

Mapping of keywords cluster.

Table 5.

Keyword clustering information table.

Time	Number	Clustering	Clustered content	Label Word	Mean Profile
2016–2021	0	Teaching model	Cross-curriculum; problem- and project-based learning; pedagogical thinking; teaching methods	25	0.943
	1	New engineering	New Engineering; Talent Cultivation; Innovativeness; TRIZ; Interdisciplinary Teaching	12	0.783
	2	Engineering education	Engineering Education; DBAL; DBL; Design; Innovation	11	0.836
	3	Design discipline	Academic Construction; Talent Cultivation System; Educational Ecology; Engineering University	9	0.973
	6	Design Education	Design education; everyday life; systemic; form design; core knowledge	9	0.943
	7	Art and craft work together	Art and industry; integration of industry and education; collaborative innovation; composite industrial design talents	4	0.992
	8	Appraisal system	Comprehensive quality; diversity; computer-aided industrial design; process-based assessment	4	0.952

From 2016 to 2021: clustering results for #0 Teaching and Learning Model, #1 New Engineering, #2 Engineering Education, #3 Design Studies, #4 Design Education, #7 Arts, and Engineering Together, and #8 Assessment System.

Cluster #0 and Cluster #3: teaching mode and design science, the keywords indicate that the study of discipline construction and teaching mode is an eternal research topic for design education researchers, focusing on the establishment of a scientific, systematic and standardized industrial design talent training system and teaching mode, exploring complete and systematic teaching strategies is the constant pursuit of discipline construction to adapt to the development of the times; Cluster #1 -New engineering includes talent training, innovation, TRIZ, interdisciplinary teaching: the key words of this cluster all belong to the research frontier direction, and scholars widely focus on building industrial design education system in the context of new engineering; Cluster #2-Engineering education is also an essential aspect of the construction of new engineering, and exploring from the perspective of engineering education an effective path suitable for practical approach of practice innovation of industrial design majors; Cluster #8-Assessment system, which contains comprehensive quality, process-oriented assessment, etc., Scholars establish a diversified assessment system based on the goal of high-quality development, promote the continuous improvement of teaching practice system, and focus on the cultivation of talents' vertical professional ability and horizontal design integration ability.

• 4)Analysis of emerging trends

Compared with national industrial policies in the last five years, a comprehensive analysis of keyword co-occurrence mapping and clustering results will reveal the following three novel hot trends in industrial design education research.

• (1)Cross-disciplinary construction in the context of the new engineering disciplines

With the continuous promotion of new engineering disciplines, the demand for knowledge production in multiple disciplines and the need to cultivate composite talents have put forward higher requirements for education and other research [31]. The State Council officially established interdisciplinary fields in 2021 and issued the “Measures for the Establishment and Management of Interdisciplinary Disciplines (for Trial Implementation)" to promote the construction of multidisciplinary disciplines and coordinate the deployment of interdisciplinary fields. Industrial design has received extensive attention and exploration for its professional construction and educational exploration because of its cross-disciplinary attributes. For example, Zhanjun Dong proposed to build industrial design into a first-level discipline under the interdisciplinary category by explaining the interdisciplinary properties of industrial design. Qing Wang introduced the “anti-disciplinary” design practice and curriculum mechanism of MIT Media Lab and proposed that China's comprehensive universities should rely on their potent power of basic research to continue. Qing Wang introduced the “anti-disciplinary” design practice and curriculum mechanism of MIT Media Lab. Ying Lu et al. proposed a framework of industrial design curriculum reform and teaching system construction with “one axis and multiple wings” in the face of the difficulties in curriculum system, teaching methods, cross-pollination of disciplines, and practical teaching support. Xiaojie Li proposed to carry out team teaching with dual tutors and explore the construction of an interdisciplinary integration platform in the context of new engineering from the aspects of teaching concept, dynamic teaching, and innovation platform. From this, the construction of multidisciplinary disciplines in the context of new engineering will become one of the tasks and research hot spots for the industrial design discipline to serve the national strategy of a “smart manufacturing country."

• (2)Study on evaluation systems in the context of quality development

Educational evaluation is a deep-water area of educational reform. High-quality development is inseparable from the supporting role of academic evaluation. Therefore, a diversified evaluation will be the main form of design educational evaluation, specifically: formative, quantitative, and participatory. Traditional result-based evaluation cannot provide teachers and students with timely information feedback and effect improvement, and cannot achieve “student-centered” education and teaching, so formative evaluation will be a sustainable teaching and learning tool, deeply integrated into the teaching design of the curriculum; quantitative evaluation is an effective supplement to qualitative evaluation, as traditional The quantitative assessment is an effective supplement to the qualitative assessment because the formal qualitative assessment is unclear or even ineffective, the quantitative evaluation will be more scientific and facilitate students to give more effective feedback; the participatory review uses every opportunity to give students learning and independent assessment, and supports the improvement of students' autonomous learning ability through students' participation. Qing Zhang proposed the integration of process assessment, which includes the learning process, attitude, behavior, and results, and summative evaluation, which provides for the final proposition test. He uses the product design teaching course as an example to make a practical exploration and reference for dynamic teaching course reform. Taking graduation design as an example, Yuqing Xu proposed a process-oriented assessment system that scientifically examines the completion of graduation design and its various aspects through quantitative evaluation of students' graduation design process in stages.

• (3)Innovation and entrepreneurship education under the development of creative industries

With the further support of national policies for creative industries, the role of design is no longer just icing on the cake but has become the backbone of creative industries driving the transformation and upgrading of manufacturing industries, and the new economic dynamics have simultaneously put forward higher demands on design education. Therefore, innovation and entrepreneurship education research are necessary for China to enter the creation and innovation-driven stage. Weizhi Cao considered the advantages of innovation and entrepreneurship education in professional colleges and universities and thought about the teaching reform of innovation and entrepreneurship education from the perspective of teaching philosophy, the benefits of “dual-teacher” teaching, project-oriented practical teaching, and connection to industrial incubators. Fang Zhao proposed to combine professional advantages with the regional economy and to build a practice-oriented innovation and entrepreneurship education model from four dimensions: content, curriculum, faculty, and guarantee system. Mingfeng He proposed to empower “industry-university-research, innovation teaching, cultural and creative products, and discipline competition” from four elements of “school-enterprise collaboration, diversified teachers, curriculum thinking and government, and professional crossover” to progressively stimulate students' motivation and build a multi-body empowered innovation and entrepreneurship education platform. The platform is a multi-participant-empowered innovation and entrepreneurship education.

4. Discussion

With the advent of industrial mass production, industrial design emerged from the practical arts as industrial technology failed to meet consumer demands for practicality, ease of use, and aesthetics of products. As one of the first institutions to engage in industrial design education, the Bauhaus implemented a dualistic education model and laid the foundations for industrial design education. This study aims to explore the interaction between national policy and industrial design education in China over the past 30 years, based on bibliometric multivariate statistical analysis and visualization of knowledge maps. The study aims to analyze, summarize, and clarify the main processes and objectives of the development of industrial design education in China over the past 30 years, such as educational strategy, educational philosophy, teaching technology, curriculum system, and so on. This shows the interaction between industrial design education and national policy in China. The overall pattern is top-down, i.e., ‘top-level design by the state, refinement, and division of labor by government departments, implementation and enforcement by local institutions and organizations, integration and development by social industries and enterprises, and practice and reflection by universities and individuals. The study found that this model is reflected in the five stages of industrial design education in China, closely related to the direction of national economic construction policies. These are the exploration stage of professional development, the integration stage with economic construction, the integration stage with enterprise innovation, the active participation stage in industrial restructuring and creative industry development, and the promotion stage of national innovation strategy.

The study interprets the main educational concepts and development strategies at each stage. The exploration phase of professional development is a difficult beginning [32]. Educational practitioners studied advanced foreign experiences and considered the integration of China's realities to develop teaching philosophies and training programs in terms of integrating teaching models with the socialist market economy; in the second stage, industrial design education continued to be aligned with economic construction. Engineering colleges offer industrial design to promote market competition, stimulate consumption and provide the manufacturing industry with a supply of talent for product design. It is proposed that the direction of industrial design education lies in cultivating comprehensive, practical, and modern innovative skills for industrial production. At this stage, many industrial design talents were delivered to the home appliance, information, and transportation industries. In the third stage, as WTO accession brought a massive market to China's manufacturing industry, the domestic manufacturing industry faced a situation where the supply of products for export exceeded the demand. At the same time, the expansion of the manufacturing industry has also caused severe homogenization of products. The contradiction between the homogeneous production of enterprise products and the high quality and heterogeneous demand of the market, and the contradiction between the output of talents from colleges and universities and the request of enterprises without linkage, makes society in urgent need of many industrial design professionals who can quickly match with the product development of enterprises. In the fourth stage, with the continuous development of information technology, the country faces a new situation of industrial restructuring, and the industrial structure is more complex and diversified. Therefore, the main task in this stage is to cultivate comprehensive and innovative talents with professional ability, design integration ability, and knowledge integration ability. At the same time, to optimize the transition of design talents to industry, the cultural and creative industries are treated as new industries, accelerating the industrial transfer of “Chinese creation”. In the fifth stage, with the implementation of the national innovation-driven strategy, the cross-fertilization of disciplines and the reform of education technology driven by information technology, guided by the new engineering and liberal arts construction projects, have become the focus of contemporary higher education. The following three hotspots emerge as a multidisciplinary crossover, higher education quality evaluation system, and innovation and entrepreneurship education.

This study reveals that the dominant influence of national industrial policy characterizes industrial design education in China. At the same time, a large body of international literature confirms that industrial design education in China has partially similar development paths, milestones, and hotspots as design education in newly industrialized countries [1]. For example, Hotspot 1 multidisciplinary cross-studies: this coincides with the techniques of industrial design education proposed by Kolko [33], who points out that large-scale product development and manufacturing require interdisciplinary development teams. Mehwish Butt suggested that engineering education needs to shift from mono-disciplinary to interdisciplinary. He also suggested that the combination of engineering knowledge and the diverse perspectives of design thinking will develop graduates' systemic thinking skills; Hotspot 2 Quality evaluation of higher education: influenced by Internet+ and information technology, various open teaching influences such as online and offline hybrid teaching will affect and even change the traditional learning model [34, 35]. Nieveen & Folmer point out that the function of conventional outcome evaluation is to “prove” to obtain valid evidence of the effectiveness of teaching and learning [36].

On the other hand, formative assessment is about improvement, revealing shortcomings in the teaching and learning process for learners and educators and making recommendations for improvement. Rozak introduces a service model to quantitatively evaluate the educational service model in a blended learning model [37]; Hotspot 3 Innovation and entrepreneurship education issues: Blankesteijn points out that science-based entrepreneurship education is an effective means of achieving university-industry technology transfer [38]. Matheson describes the impact of the creative industries on design education in New Zealand and notes that cultural and creative policies from the government are used to bring society, culture, and the economy together [39]. As Florida suggested in 2002: the profound and lasting changes affecting this era are not technological but social and cultural.

National policy is one of the key factors influencing the development of industrial design education. This study collates, analyses, and interprets the interaction between the two, providing scholars with an objective intellectual landscape, a historical context of development, and current research hotspots for understanding and studying industrial design education in China. It is worth noting that this paper is only a context analysis of the research literature on industrial design education in China from a policy perspective. However, industrial design is influenced not only by technological development and economic construction but also by social formations, anthropology, etc. It is suggested that industrial design education provides a strong, vital education for the training of professionals in mining-related professions in mining areas, promoting the development of this area for a short period of time. However, as mines close, these areas become less popular, and people are exposed to social risks, hence the importance of foreign direct investment in these towns. Faced with the problem of marginalized people in the social fabric and their need for social integration, Torrens emphasized the importance of industrial designers developing products for specific groups of people to meet the graduates' ability to solve the ever-emerging social problems [40]. Furthermore, polytechnics and other comprehensive universities have proven to be centers of attraction for talent from other parts of the country. As a result, industrial design education in comprehensive universities is showing sound momentum and attracting internal migrants from different regions [41].

In the follow-up study, two areas of optimization are suggested and planned. These are a multidimensional discussion of the factors influencing industrial design education and the optimization of data on industrial design education research results. For the former, we will analyze the social, cultural, and demographic factors influencing industrial design education, explore the development model of industrial design education in China from different perspectives, and summarize the experience of policy-driven development of industrial design in newly industrialized countries. In the latter, we plan to introduce multiple outcome evaluation indicators, such as teachers' teaching competitions, public courses, teaching lectures, the number of undergraduate and doctoral students, employment and further education rates, and design competition awards. By combining the theoretical research results of scholars with the results of educational practice, we will sort out the development achievements of Chinese industrial design education from an empirical perspective and form a discourse system of Chinese industrial design education.

5. Conclusion

The study provides a practical reference for international scholars studying the interaction between education and influencing factors. The results of the last three decades of industrial design education research in CNKI are selected, and scientometric methods are applied for knowledge mapping analysis. The study effectively combed through the research literature of scholars over the years and found a standard mapping between their research hotspots and policy keywords. The main results are described as follows:

First, industrial design education studies have shown a general trend of steady growth over the last three decades. It has stabilized in a high-quality interval in recent years.

Secondly, the distribution of core journals shows the interdisciplinary character of industrial design education research. It provides essential sources of knowledge and research themes for industrial design education research: (1) themes in line with Chinese culture, (2) themes centered on interdisciplinary cooperation, and (3) themes centered on “government, industry, academia, and research."

Thirdly, scientific research forces are fragmented, mainly within universities and tutor groups, and no close academic community has emerged. Interdisciplinary and cross-university cooperation has not been popularized and is primarily at the stage of independent exploration by institutions. Therefore, conforming to the cross-disciplinary properties and carrying out university education reform is one of the bottlenecks and breakthrough points of the current industrial design education reform.

Finally, based on the evolutionary process of research hot spots and themes, the local research related to industrial design education is influenced by the domestic and international economic environment and academic and technical factors. However, overall, its theoretical study and practical exploration follow the specific national conditions and the direction of national strategic policies in China, aiming at exploring the path of industrial design education with Chinese characteristics. In summary, due to the limitations of the keyword search and literature sample, the visualization mapping does not show the complete research hot spots and directions of industrial design education in China. In addition, many articles also focus on interaction design, information design, virtual teaching labs, etc., but these contents are not well represented in the keywords. This also indicates that Chinese industrial design education research has paid attention to these aspects but has not explored them systematically. Although the era of digitalization and information technology has brought new solutions to the problems of industrial design education in China, it is more important to get out of the misconception of method application and system grafting. In exploring industrial design education with Chinese characteristics, we need to follow the national strategic guidelines and adhere to cultural self-confidence. Based on the foundation of colleges and the regional economy, we continuously carry out practical verification and assessment based on considering theoretical innovation to achieve an organic unity of theory and practice.

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