The Crafts direction focuses on the core challenges of new concepts, new materials, new technologies, and new styles. With an academic philosophy centered on "crafts and culture, heritage and breakthrough" and an undertaking to reconcile the East and the West and integrate the old and the new, the direction is dedicated to advocating the age-old Eastern culture of crafts, improving the current quality of life, innovating and advancing breakthroughs, and promoting the design of cultural, handcrafted works. Concurrently, the direction is also exploring the integration of digital technologies and handmade crafts as well as conducting technical research on the digital and multimodal collection, processing, and integration of traditional crafts. It is exploring creative designs for traditional handcrafted works and carrying out applied research in material reconstruction, technical equipment, digital molding, and intelligent firing. The direction currently offers four majors: Ceramics, Glass, Jewelry and Lacquerware.

Founded to meet the developmental needs of the future, Visual Communication will explore professional fields such as "Visual Communication" and "Digital Media Art" to unearth new potential and possibilities in the area of contemporary studies in visual communication. Visual Communication capitalizes on China's developmental strategies in the new era and its global perspective to respond to the complex, multifaceted needs of the current world proactively. Its progressive approach to design has provided a dose of creativity and drive to cultural preservation and innovation and spurred social innovation. Visual Communication carries out critical, cross-disciplinary analysis through predictive experimentations and sets down integrated, multifaceted and systematic design methodologies by employing holistic, intermedia communications of the future. Rooted in passion for visual culture, Visual Communication strives to build a framework of visual communication that connects people, things, events, and society, embrace social changes through visual media, and promote social development via communications.

Fashion Design direction is focused on avant-garde fashion and research in areas such as "sustainable design" and "native Eastern discourse". As an international workshop, Fashion Design strives to build an international circle of partners and engage in the global dialogue of diversity and internationalism. The textile and garment industry cluster located at the Yangtze River Delta provides Fashion Design direction with a competitive edge when it comes to learning and manufacturing. The direction's key area of research includes "design systems and methodologies", "product design and business management", "keeping traditional cultural heritage alive", and "the synthesis of art and science and materials innovation". Fashion Design direction conducts topical classes on "fashion trends", supports industrial transformation and upgrading, and is a pioneer in education on fashion design.

Built on the foundation of user studies and guided by cultural understanding as well as intelligent science and art as it navigates the digital landscape, the Industrial and Product Design direction focuses on research in everyday aesthetics, digital interaction, intelligent manufacturing, and intelligent travel. Through innovative applications in fields such as artificial intelligence, industrial IoT, transport, lifestyle, as well as travel and leisure, this direction blends cross-disciplinary methodologies and technologies such as computer technology, Kansei engineering, mechanical engineering, electronic technology, and business management to reinvent everyday life in the Information Age, build a new ecosystem for intelligent industries, and nurture creative talents with a distinctive creative voice and a flair for management.

With a focus on the technological revolution and industrial transformation in the current age of artificial intelligence and big data, new ways of fusing art and technology, and the new ecosystems that may arise from such syntheses, the Intelligence, Innovation and Design direction aims to establish innovative design theories while exploring innovative approaches to design. The direction promotes interdisciplinary integration that involves multiple disciplines such as arts, humanities, science and technology, sociology, and business as it explores new human experiences and design systems such as algorithmic art, media of the future, digital twins, the metaverse, new materials, and intelligent products. It promotes the progressive integration of design and innovation through theoretical research in and the practical application of intelligent and innovative design that are progressive, innovative and intersectional.

The Design and Humanities direction aims to reinvent everyday life as well as design and humanities by proposing new ideas that redefine the relationship among design, people, and society. Through a purposeful, critical analysis and assessment of the intrinsic nature, structure, functions, and developmental trends of design in everyday life, politics, the economy, culture, society, and other factors that influence design and determine its creation, the direction strives to identify innovative and developmental trends and consider the cultural context during design. This serves as a foundation for its establishment of a systematic theoretical framework that challenges existing theoretical principles and paves the way for the exploration of the diverse possibilities when it comes to the development of design.