The Analysis of the School Factor in Industrial Design Competitions: 2015-2020 İMMİB Competition Student Category Winners

Turkish Steel Exporters’ Association (İMMİB) Industrial Design Competition is important both for professionals and students among Turkish designer community for many reasons. In addition to its nationwide recognition, the winners are awarded with many monetary and non-monetary benefits. Particularly the international scholarship for graduate education is a major motivating factor for students for participating to the competition. The main objective of this study is to reveal school related factors that affect İMMİB Industrial Design Competition student category results. For this reason, data on 2015-2020 İMMİB Industrial Design Competition winners have been analysed. The analysis has been carried out by doing document analysis from secondary sources and applying an on-line survey to the winners. A total of 92 prizes have been distributed between 2015-2020 to 84 students. Out of 84 students, 42 participated to the survey and 40 valid responses were obtained. Results reveal that i) the older the department, the higher the frequency of winners coming from that particular university, ii) for students coming from universities adopting the central examination system, the majority of students have relatively high entrance exam scores, iii) the majority of the projects are done during course hours at school, particularly in the case of privately owned universities. This paper discusses the reasons and the outcomes of working competition projects during course hours particularly design studio courses. Ethics and privacy are revealed as potential problem areas as an outcome of carrying out the competition preparation during course hours.