Industrial Design Program

Program Introduction （工业设计专业简介）

Established in 1993, the Industrial Design program at NCU is the first of its kind in Jiangxi Province. Housed within the Department of Industrial Design under the School of Architecture and Design, the program admitted its first cohort of engineering students that same year and was recognized as a “Jiangxi Provincial Brand Program” in 2004. Building on this foundation, the department gained the right to confer a Master’s degree in Design Art (now a first-level discipline) in 2000, followed by a Master’s degree in Industrial Design Engineering (2005), and a Master of Fine Arts (MFA, 2009). Its Design Art discipline was recognized as a Key Provincial Discipline during both the 10th and 11th Five-Year Plan periods. In 2018, the program ranked first in Jiangxi’s inaugural Comprehensive Evaluation of Undergraduate Programs and was approved as a Provincial First-Class Undergraduate Program Construction Site in 2019. It has earned multiple distinctions, including designation as a National First-Class Undergraduate Course (inaugural cohort) and an MOE Ideological and Political Education Model Course; recognition as an MOE Ideological and Political Education Teaching Team; approval as an MOE New Liberal Arts Research and Reform Practice Project (inaugural selection) and an MOE Humanities and Social Sciences Research Project; the First Prize of the Jiangxi Provincial Teaching Achievement Award; and recognition as a Jiangxi Provincial High-Level Undergraduate Teaching Team.

This program takes advantage of Jiangxi Province’s strong push for industrial design development and NCU’s initiatives in “ministry-provincial co-construction” and “Double First-Class” discipline construction, contributing to the industrial transformation, upgrading, and regional economic development of Jiangxi. It is dedicated to maintaining a long-term leadership position among universities in the province.

In 2020, leveraging the university’s strengths in Design Science, the “Double First-Class” Materials Science discipline, relevant science and engineering departments, the National Silicon-Based LED Engineering Research Center, and the Industrial Design Research Institute, our Industrial Design Program pioneered the first “Smart Lighting Design Track” among Chinese universities—explicitly oriented toward the evolving needs of the lighting industry. This track focuses on frontier domains such as smart home lighting, smart public lighting, smart city lighting, and interdisciplinary integrated design. It has established a distinctive, interdisciplinary, and diversified talent development model.