產品架構能力之研究

How Industrial Designers Create Product Architectures

當前台灣的工業設計專業在整體產業結構轉變中帶來了衝擊與影響，如何尋求創新的產品概念已成為新的課題。雖然以往產品架構普遍被視為應該隨產品概念發展階段展開，但是如何有效學習建立產品架構的要領仍有待研究。本研究進行二個實驗發現，（1）運用設計案例比運用設計規則能產生較多的產品架構提案，（2）造形重建能力與其產品架構表現無顯著相關、以及（3）是否應用機能組織表對於產品架構表現沒有顯著影響。這些初步發現值得教育界與實務界參考，但未來應進一步探討設計師的創新產品概念的表現能力與套用既有案例的類比能力之間的關係。

The capability to create product architectures is very important for industrial designers, because it is the arrangement of functional elements of a product into physical blocks in earlier design stages. This study attends to explore how the designers create product architectures. Two experiments are conducted to examine the aspects that are related to the capabilities. Three findings were obtained as follows: （1） the resource for the designers to generate product architecture is the given design cases, rather than the given design guidelines, （2） the relationship between the designers' capabilities to remodel product appearances and to represent product architectures is not significant, and （3） the relationship between the designers' use of product functional diagrams and their capabilities of product architectures is not significant. The results of this study could be applied to both of the areas of design practice and education. The further studies should include the inquiry on how the designers generate innovative product architectures by means of analogy.