Product design expertise has mostly been studied in relation to problem-solving and the act of designing. In this paper, we approach the topic from another perspective and explore the differences in product perception of students from different education levels. We conceptualize product perception as a representation of critical thinking towards designed objects and professional assessment/understanding of artifacts. Our aim is to evaluate how students’ product perception change over the years of undergraduate product design education. Data was collected through students’ written product evaluations of a ball-point pen. 41 first-year, 29 second-year, 33 third-year, and 26 fourth-year undergraduate product design students participated in the study. We analyzed students’ product evaluations through initial and focused coding. Our findings indicate a shift from ordinary to professional sense-making between the second- and third-year students. There are three main points that define the professional sense-making of students: a dependence on subjectivity, the significance attributed to users, and better synthetic capabilities that are built around form, material, manufacturing, and detailing relationships.

产品设计专业知识主要与解决问题和设计行为有关。在本文中，我们从另一个角度切入主题，探讨不同教育水平学生对产品认知的差异。我们将产品感知概念化为对设计对象的批判性思维和对工件的专业评估/理解的表示。我们的目标是评估学生的产品感知在本科产品设计教育多年中如何变化。数据是通过学生对圆珠笔的书面产品评估收集的。41 名一年级、29 名二年级、33 名三年级和 26 名四年级产品设计本科生参与了研究。我们通过初始和重点编码分析了学生的产品评估。我们的研究结果表明，二年级和三年级学生之间从普通到专业意义的转变。定义学生专业意义的三个要点：对主观性的依赖，赋予用户的重要性，以及围绕形式、材料、制造和细节关系建立的更好的综合能力。