Factors in an Interdisciplinary Curriculum for the Students of Industrial Design Designing Multifunctional Products

To assist learners in obtaining professional abilities, meet social demand for talent, and achieve favorable educational outcomes, academic courses generally have unique syllabuses, learning goals, and teaching purposes according to their characteristics and specialized knowledge and skills. Furthermore, it could help the students of Industrial Design enhance the connection with employment after the graduation when they understand the characteristics of auxiliary devices and equipment before entering workplaces. Meanwhile, the students being cultivated the design capability could improve and innovate tools, as the improvement of auxiliary devices and the practical design of innovative products and the functions from a professional engineer are close to the users' demands. In this study, the Delphi method, a group decision-making technique, and the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) multiattribute decision-making function was adopted to establish a decision-making model for designing multifunctional products for assessing the students of Industrial Design in learning effectiveness in innovative engineering product design and development. In addition, a practical multifunctional product-design case was investigated to demonstrate the application of the model. This study found that integrating interdisciplinary courses and instruction by industry professionals and introducing industry-academia cooperation had a considerable influence on interdisciplinary teaching and learning.