Core Course

• Design Language 1
  

Materials are the starting point of design thinking. This course guides students to grasp both the advantages and limitations of materials through cross-disciplinary research in materials mechanics, physics, and chemistry, and thereby to discover new possibilities for design. It emphasizes the cultivation of the abilities to "perceive through touch, think with the hands, and design through making," fostering the methods and skills of constructing design context through materials: namely, classifying, analyzing, and understanding materials through a professional lens and, on this basis, undertaking purposeful and logical exploration and innovation, and—through experimental conception and the exploration of new materials—bringing a new face to design. Ultimately, the course cultivates innovative, interdisciplinary talent capable of developing and harnessing new materials and technologies and enhancing material performance.

Level: Undergraduate

• Design Language 2
  

This course takes embodied movement as its entry point, guiding students to observe, deconstruct, and distill everyday physical behaviors. Through this process, they come to perceive the intrinsic connections between action and emotional meaning, as well as the dynamic relationship between people and objects in interaction. The curriculum follows a three-part framework—Decoding, Semantic Translation, and Embodied Making. Students conduct field research on everyday actions, extract physical action models, compile emotional mood boards, and iterate through multiple rounds of sketching. They then produce high-fidelity interactive prototypes, cultivating a mode of body-centered, perceptual thinking throughout the making process. At every stage, the course emphasizes bodily experience, systematic documentation of both action and reasoning, and rigorous attention to interactive details. The final outcome is a series of original, embodied products that form a complete, logically coherent experience.

Level: Undergraduate

• Design Language 4
  

This course works to establish the values of sustainable development, guiding students to coordinate environmental, social, and economic sustainability in product and system design, with the goals of reducing resource consumption, lowering environmental impact, and enhancing both social and economic benefits. It cultivates a spirit of innovation and critical thinking, encouraging students to explore design problems across multiple dimensions, to break with conventional solutions, and to objectively evaluate and iterate on their design outcomes; at the same time, throughout data collection and the design process, students are to respect users' rights and interests, protect privacy, and adhere to ethical standards. Proceeding from the perspective of sustainable systems, students will thoroughly master the knowledge and skills needed to address innovation challenges, learning to explore and map systems within emerging scenarios, to build interdisciplinary connections, and to appropriately apply design engineering tools—thereby supporting enterprises in their transition toward a sustainable circular economy.

Level: Undergraduate

• Art Expression 2
  

This course takes "product imagery and contextual narrative" as its central proposition, guiding students to proceed from usage contexts and lifestyles to achieve a systematic expression that moves from conceptual ideation to visual presentation. Teaching unfolds progressively through a project-based structure: students refine product concepts and formal language through research, explore form, material, and usage scenarios with the aid of concept art and AI-generative tools, and ultimately complete the visual expression and presentation of their proposals. The course focuses on cultivating students' abilities in formal imagination, conceptual visual expression, and the integrated use of digital tools, establishing a methodological awareness of driving product innovation through contextual narrative, and laying a foundation of expression and thinking for subsequent professional design.

Level: Undergraduate / Graduate

Course Images