At the invitation of Associate Professor Lei Tian, Lecturer Ji Qian and Lecturer Zhu Zhijuan, Professor Yen, Director of CUTE Center of National University of Singapore (NUS), visited MSE and delivered a wonderful report entitled “Interactive Design and Singapore Design Education” on the afternoon of June 9, 2017.
Interactive design is a technique which embeds information to a complex material world. It tries to create and build significant relationships among people, products and services by defining the content and structure of communication of two or more interacting individuals. Beginning with the latest concept of interactive design "Creating Unique Technology for Everyone", Professor Yen put forward three core elements of interactive design in the new situation, namely, people-oriented design concepts, new opportunities brought by social changes and probable changes brought by existing technologies.
Prof. Yen believes that although the development of advanced science and technology has benefited human society in all aspects, it also inevitably brings an embarrassing phenomenon, the "last mile from technology to user", which means the end users do not fully get the perfect experience and benefits brought by technologies. Interaction design is one of the ways to solve this problem effectively. It makes users understand the benefits of technology better and makes technologies serve the end users better. At the same time, Professor Yen shared the teaching models and experience of industrial design in Singapore with the teachers and students presented. In his opinion, it is very important to mobilize students' subjective initiatives and maintain real-time communication with students, which will enhance teaching effects and improve teaching quality.
Professor Yen is the director of Keio-NUS CUTE center, which is a joint collaboration between NUS and Keio University, Japan. He possesses profound academic background and rich experience in the design project. Under his guidance, students have received 2006 Red Dots Concept Award, Braun Prize 2007, Luminary Award 2007, 2008 IF Prize, and more than 30 international or regional design awards. He has written more than 40 academic papers, and serves as a guest editor of Innovation and International Product Development. He is also the reviewer of many important international design conferences and competitions. Keio-NUS CUTE Centre, where he works, is an important research institution for the basic study of new social interactive digital media in the future for NUS.
This exchange and visit play a positive role in promoting the teaching reform project of HUST “Teaching Exploration of Research - oriented Courses for Design Artistic Students”, and was funded by International Cooperation Promotion Plan of MSE.
