Chung Yuan University’s School of Design has been organizing the ‘Design Together First-Year Basic Design Course Exchange’ event for four consecutive years. Initiated and coordinated by the Dean of the School of Design, Jia-Lin Chao, this event brings together all first-year students and instructors from the School of Design to collaboratively explore, learn, create, and share design thinking and experiences based on a common design theme. This teaching approach is entirely distinct from that of other institutions of higher education and stands as a unique innovation in the country’s teaching methods.
This year’s ‘Design Together First-Year Basic Design Course Exchange’ centered around the theme of ‘Designed Self: ‘Past,’ ‘Present,’ ‘Future’ Me.’ It aimed to inspire students to engage in deep self-reflection, encompassing their past experiences, current self-awareness, and their imagination and shaping of their future selves. Through the symbolic elements of basic design, students participated in the process of visualizing and three-dimensional design, fostering self-awareness and creative inspiration.
The success of this event is attributed to the collective efforts of over 30 professors from the five departments of the School of Design, along with 10 teaching assistants and more than 300 students. It stands as a significant innovation in the field of design education.
Chung Yuan University’s School of Design emphasizes that courses of this nature constitute a journey of self-discovery, divided into two phases, with a focus on expressing one’s ‘self’ in the past, present, and future through design. This process helps gain deeper insights into students’ interests, values, and personality traits. By participating in the design process, students not only experience emotions, thoughts, and memories but also find inspiration for creativity. It is hoped that through the exchange of the “Design Together” course, students will strengthen their abilities in six major areas: narrative expression, self-identification, environmental awareness, graphic aesthetics, spatial organization, and representation transformation.
