The influence of gender, learning background, participation, and topic limitation on the imagination of industrial design students in Taiwan

In this study, five industrial senior designers are invited to observe and record a required design practice course of an industrial design department of a university for one semester, 18 weeks, each week for 5-6 hours. During the process, the imagination indicators proposed by Vygotsky is adopted in combination with a 5-point Likert scale. The sophomore class, 63 students in total, is observed. The outcome of study indicates that when the topics are with limitation, the gender factor has significant influence during design stages, and the influence of students' pre-university learning background is significant as well. When the topics are not limited, the influence of the gender factor also appears to be significant. The pre-university learning background has more influence on the performance of imagination and vocational high school graduates do better than regular high school graduates. In the meantime, students with higher level of class participation exhibit better imagination.