Thirteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

In the past twenty years, the real estate industry in China has experienced significant development. The industry both supports and relies on the urbanization process of China. For property developers, this rapid development comes with both opportunities and challenges. Under these circumstances, design standardizations have been widely adopted by developers in the residential building design and design management processes since the early 2000s. Previous researches have examined the use of design standardizations at the organization and societal levels, for example, the developers’ aims, approaches, benefits, and problems of the use of design standardizations, the developers’ preparation and application processes of the use of design standardization. Limited researches have focused on perspectives of design managers and other stakeholders. Therefore, this researcher has adopted an in-depth interview approach and has conducted eleven interviews with participants of a rich combination of background. The analytical method is inductive coding and the anaytical tool is MAXQDA. The findings include a summary of stakeholders’ insights on the initiation and adoption of design standardizations, stakeholders’ understandings on the pros and cons of the use of design standardization at individual, organization, and societal levels, the stakeholders’ estimations on the overall degree of the use of standardized designs, and stakeholders’ evaluations on the past use of design standardizations and stakeholders’ expectations on the future use of design standardizations.