Design Thinking and Metacognitive Reflective Scaffolds: a Graphic Design-industrial Design Transfer Case Study

Scaffolding is crucial as transfer of learning does not occur naturally and teaching-learning strategies found to be effective for experts may not be suitably adopted as is for novice learners. Furthermore, opportunities are often “found” or “made.” The quality of solutions, however, is mediated by different conceptualizations of contexts. We aim to investigate whether design thinking and metacognitive reflective scaffolds can help graphic design students to design on a different canvas, i.e., for industrial design, in order to increase their job opportunities. Findings indicate that students are able to identify and match patterns, theorize based on their graphic design knowledge (to transform fuzzy association patterns into fuzzy associative rules) and analyse existing designs in the market to create their own designs. The significance of the study are useful to the learning of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, co-design of designs/uses for smart technologies, industrial design, and embedded cognitive systems, such as robotics and Internet of Things (IoT).