My Learning of Design

My design education can be divided into three periods. The first period started in 1987 when I began my undergraduate study in crafts and design in Taiwan. In 1992, I started my graduate studyin graphic designin the US, and that marked the beginning of my second learning period. After practising and teaching design for more than 14 years, I decided to pursue my doctoral study in design education and started the third learning period in 2006. In each period, not only my formal school education but also my own practice of design enabled me to learn different aspects of design, and that greatly influenced my understanding of design and my choices of teaching activities. Figure 28 shows the timeline of my learning journey in the design field.

Figure 28: Timeline of my education and work experiences.

The first period of my learning about design started in 1987 when I was a design studentin the Department of Crafts and Designat the National Taiwan University of Arts.Back then in Taiwan, education was still greatly influenced by traditional Chinese culture and creativity was not very valued in normal education. The Chinese consider education as a stepping stone to success and children are under much pressure to excel in school. In ancient China, Imperial exams, a civil service examination system, was used to select bureaucracy. Today’s education system in Taiwan, China and Hong Kong (Eng, 2012) still utilise examinations as the primary means to select students for various school levels. Although the education reforms in Taiwan have allowed different ways of recognising students’ talents and entering the school, national examinations still remain. The examinations strongly influence the way of teaching and learning. Too many examinations make education a tool for examinations. As a

result, creativity, critical thinking, and reflection are not stressed in schools. However, the traditional Chinese education values students’ learning outcomes. Establishing the standards of learning outcomes can help students improve their academic performance. The goal of a course subject is well defined and predictable. Students follow their teachers’ guidance, take examinations, repeat the exams, and give measurable learning outcomes. Through repeated practice, students resume the learning cycle until mastering their skills or knowledge. Therefore, I consider this process like the mastery of the art.

For me, mastering art skills is fundamental for being a designer, and that has been an important objective of my teaching. To develop mastery, students must acquire component skills, practise integrating them, and know when to apply what they have learned. Mastery-based learning allows students to learn at their own pace. Goal- directed practice coupled with targeted feedback enhances the quality of students’ learning. In my design teaching, I still utilise the mastery approach to help students acquire solid design skills, especially when guiding students in understanding design principles. Without sufficient skills and knowledge, students will have difficulty in expressing and realise their design ideas.

I also learned the aspect of craft in this period. My school, National Taiwan University of Arts, was the first art school in Taiwan. It has many majors and strongly emphasizes skills and hands-on practice, and that allowed me to contact with many different crafts, tools and materials. A great part of my undergraduate curriculum was centred on hand-drawn skills and layout concepts. Even later when I worked as a professional designer, many of my works involved hands-on skills, such as cutting images, typesetting fonts, laying artworks for printing. Craftsmanship, which often involves

tools, materials, and techniques, is still highly valued in design education. Despite time-consuming, the touch and feel gained in hands-on activities enhance a designers’ sensitivity to materials and so design. Although some design can now be simulated on digital devices, I encourage and demand students to gain first-hand experience in utilising various types of material. Playing with paper, fabric, plastic, wood, clay, metal, etc. is a vital part of my teaching since learning the senses cannot be replaced by simulations.

The second period of my learning of design started in 1992. As a graduate student of graphic design at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, USA, I witnessed and followed the development of computers and started integrating digital technology into my design workflow.

Because the trend of digital technology brought many possibilities to design, it affected my understanding and using of the technological aspects of design. In the 1990s, Macintosh computers became a popular tool for graphic design and desktop publishing. I explored digital tools, such as Photoshop, Freehand and Quark Xpress, and integrated multimedia into my study. I then realised the potential and significance of computer technology in design education. I was attracted to the new digital world that can be made from nothing. Different from traditional graphic design approaches, digital tools could provide more possibilities for manipulating design. My MFA thesis project then combined hand-drawn and digital images

During this period, I was also greatly inspired by the developmental aspects of design education. My graduate lessons for design were often conducted in seminars through conversation and discussion. The process of doing design employed various formats

and media, including books, poems, films, exhibitions, and even face-to-face workshops with famous designers, such as April Greiman — a New Wave post- modernist, and Anthon Beeke — one of the top Dutch designers of the twentieth century. Interacting with renowned designers certainly broadened my understanding of design.Later in my teaching, I value the developmental aspects of design education, which demand individual, independent thinking. To help students develop their own thinking and making, teachers need to provide various material and activities.

In 2006, while undertaking my PhD study, I started learning the academic aspect of design and applying research skills to identify and solve design problems, signifying the third period of my learning of design. I realised that design teachers need to provide problem settings, instead of problems. How teachers distribute design problems to students can affect the way students observe and think. In my teaching, I then encourage students to identify design problems and research on solutions. During this period, I also learned the social aspects of design. All man-made products, whether physical or not, are the results of design; therefore, design problems exist everywhere in human society. Design functions in many ways and serves various people. In a typical design setting, designers identify clients’ problems, but when we need to communicate design problems occurred in a community, we must first understand the culture and environment of the community.