The effects of adopting the innovative dynamic product design method on the performance of students of different learning styles

The innovative dynamic product design (IDPD)methodhas been proposed andproven to be effective in diversifying how designers think. To further understand the influence of learning styles on the applications of the IDPD method, this study recruited student designers to actually employ this method in designing products, and the effects of the method on the performance of the students with different learning styles were analysed. This study contains three stages. In the first stage, we divided the 16 industrial design students into 4 groups according to Kolb’s learning style inventory, and every groupwas required to attend a product developmentworkshop and apply the IDPDmethod. In the second stage, we conducted a questionnaire survey on the users who had used the products of the students and evaluated the performance of the student groups. In the third stage, the students evaluated and provided feedback regarding the IDPD method. The research results showed that the products yielded significantly different user evaluations based on student learning style: the accommodators garnered the highest score, followed by the assimilators, divergers, and convergers. The information processing method of accommodators and convergers were identically active experimentation. However, the difference in information perceptions of these two types of learners resulted in considerable difference in evaluations on design works. User evaluations onworks by divergers and assimilators had little difference, which indicated that regardless of the methods to receive information the reflective observation information processingmethod did not pose extreme evaluations on student performance. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.