Applying Design Thinking as a Method for Teaching Packaging Design

Design thinking is a human-centered creative method that can be used to seek innovative solutions for life and social topics. Moreover, design thinking can enable developing innovative ideas that can satisfy consumer needs. A packaging design course is a professional course that combines material application, design aesthetics, and branding. It is also a comprehensive science course that emphasizes developing students’ creative thinking and the ability to use practical technologies. This study applied an experimental teaching method to introduce design thinking in a packaging design course. The aim was to guide students to identify problems from the perspectives of product packaging, brand image, spatial structure, and marketing. Students were expected to be able to reconsider the meaning and importance of packaging design and thus enhance their structural creativity, visual aesthetics, and design thinking, in addition to improving their rational analysis and design problem-solving abilities.


Introduction
Design thinking has been highly appreciated by scholars and used by businesses and organizations to solve social and commercial problems and to cope with increasing complexity of society, as well as satisfy consumers' inner needs (Dunne & Martin, 2006).A review of research in the past 10 years revealed that increasing numbers of scholars have strongly promoted using the design thinking approach to address the increasingly complex social and environmental trends and propose more innovative problem-solving methods (Lugmayr, Stockleben, & Zou, 2014).Design thinking is a human-centered problem-solving approach (Melles, Howard, & Thompson-Whiteside, 2012); solutions derived using this approach afford considerable possibilities of innovation (Brown & Wyatt, 2010).The main difference between design thinking and traditional analytical thinking is that design thinking is a creative thinking approach that tends toward emotional analysis, whereas analytical thinking is based on rational analysis (Razzouk & Shute, 2012).The design thinking approach enables designers to identify actual customer needs and propose rational, artistic, and innovative ideas to address such needs (Lugmay, 2011).In recent years, numerous education strategies have introduced design thinking into classes in order to stimulate students' conception of innovative ideas to resolve existing problem or expected problems (Scheer, Noweski, & Meinel, 2012).
Packaging design involves both visual design and product design and is related to brand visual identity, container structure, and product functionality.In addition, packaging design requires high levels of creativity and professional skills (DuPuis & Silva, 2011;Orth & Malkewitz, 2008).In Asia, teaching methods for packaging design mostly focus on internal factors-namely visual design teaching-including product rendering, design methods, and presentation and visual imagery styles; teaching methods focusing on external factors associated with packaging design, such as the social background of packaging, use instruction, and consumer groups, are relatively few (Wang, 2016).Furthermore, packaging design in Taiwan involves several problems such as lack of creativity in shape designs, lack of professional packaging designers, lack of cooperative marketing strategies, and lack of manufacturing technology (Hsu, 2002).Therefore, the traditional teaching model for packaging design is limited to teaching students to emphasize artistic effects.This model can no longer meet the demand of the new economic era.Accordingly, the objective of this study was to introduce design thinking in the teaching of packaging design, with the aim of guiding students to solve problems from the perspective of product were integrated.Specifically, teachers previously focused on professional theories, and this type of "dynamic thinking" and "static teaching" is not effective for teaching students to transform design plans into products.The main cause of the aforementioned problem is that teachers' teaching was inconsistent with actual practical scenarios.Additionally, teaching methods were limited because of the enclosed teaching environment.Teaching processes were repressive, passive, negative, and enclosed because teachers were required to adhere to teaching standards and order (Wang, 2016).Ho (2008) provided the following teaching suggestions for addressing this problem: (1) introduce actual products in the course to enable students to experience actual packaging practices independently or in groups; (2) design lessons that can enable students to understand the concepts of packaging on the basis of the design knowledge they have gained; and (3) guide students to enhance their design performance and communication ability to meet industrial standards.Overall, the importance of packaging design is recognized in Taiwan; however, Taiwanese teachers previously emphasized the teaching of theories, making it difficult for students to discover the relationship between product packaging and consumers and identify actual consumer needs.Therefore, creative teaching reforms should be implemented in packaging design courses in Taiwan.
The principle of packaging design is to convey design thinking and teach design methods.The purpose of creating such reforms is not to cultivate designers but to guide students in expressing themselves and cultivating real problem-solving abilities, thereby enabling them to propose creative packaging design concepts.However, the question as to how to achieve creative teaching in packaging design courses requires clarification.Ho (2008) proposed the implementation of three trial policies.(1) Reorganize the processes of packaging design: New generations of packaging designers must understand the culture of their society, entrepreneurship, product content, and consumer groups before implementing new packaging design concepts.Thus, they can make accurate and precise design positioning decisions.(2) Introduce products in the course: In previous design teaching methods, students were taught virtual design topics that had limited connection with industry.This led students to focus on aesthetic designs, which resulted in products that were visually pleasing but had little functionality.(3) Introduce design competitions in teaching: Competitions can enable students to experience a complete design process through completing a design project.Moreover, the competitions can enable students to experience professional standards, enable them to experience the difficulties and satisfaction associated with design processes, and stimulate their desire for knowledge and creative thinking.

Course Design
A packaging design course is a professional design course that combines material application, design aesthetics, and brand marketing.It is also a comprehensive science course that emphasizes the cultivation of students' creative thinking and practical abilities.Therefore, we developed a course that involved design thinking and innovative teaching plans to guide students in implementing packaging designs.Table 1 presents the related course information and course content.

Course information
Content description

Teaching goals
Cultivate students' ability to think from the perspective of product packaging, brand image, and marketing.Topics included spatial structure of packaging, product positioning, product marketing, and graphic visual design.Train students to enhance their structural creativity, visual aesthetics, design thinking ability, and design problem-solving ability through rational analysis.

Teaching hours
The duration of the course was 7 weeks.The course was taught 3 hours per week, and the total course time was 21 hours.

Teaching content
Packaging materials and the form of finished products, packaging design and marketing, visual design skills for product packaging, packaging design inspirations, and packaging structural design tests.
Teaching activity (1) Lecturing (20%): invite teachers from the design industry to share their packaging design cases and enable students to discover and understand the process of packaging design and gain inspiration from practical cases.(2) In-class practical (40%): instruct groups and teams to develop ideas and improve the packaging design of actual products; students learn problem-solving methods from practical exercises.(3) Group discussion (40%): instruct students to analyze product brand characteristics, consumer groups, product features, assortment structures, existing packaging design problems, and other items, and finally, encourage them to propose innovative designs on the basis of the analysis of these problems.The , and velop an be scard owed first, followed by establishing their theoretical basis.This teaching method can effectively improve students' learning interest and motivation.Furthermore, the traditional teaching model is marred by the barrier between students and the teacher.Specifically, teacher speaks continually in front of students, who only listen without the opportunity to respond.This model can be modified by rendering students the main parties and teachers the complementary parties in the learning process.Thus, students can have the opportunity to think about the content they wish to learn and interact with the teachers during learning.