Ching-Chiuan Yen

My teaching philosophy focuses on the concepts below:Studentcentred approach: is the principle behind the consents of my course which starts in the approach of instruction in the lower level to the approach of selfconstruction in the higher level.Practice professionally : is the ultimate objectives that the course would like to achieveLearning from the best: to allow me to demonstrate the best practice to the students, in order to broaden the understanding and vision of the student.Back to basic: to allow me to explain complex design problems in a simple way.)Industrial/product design is neither art, craft, nor engineering. It has its own purposes, values, measures and procedures. It can be assumed that there is a way of processing education for design as design knowledge is gained through both research and practice. More accurately, design studies could be described as a ‘field of knowledge’, because it is multifaceted and draws upon many related disciplines. Design, like many other occupations is seeking to establish itself as a profession, it is therefore concerned with the development of a service orientation, the continual growth of knowledge, based on practice, and the evolution of a distinct body of knowledge that distinguishes designers from other professionals. Design is a profession that demands a distinct body of knowledge in support of innovative enterprises. Thus the aim of design education operates at the interface between academic inquiry and industrial practice, and the creative tension which can emerge from the sometimes differing world views can stimulate the demand for new knowledge generated for design. This is an area of intense academic interest education.The position for design education that is taken is therefore to emphasize the NEW DESIGN PARADIGM, which is to inculcate design education achieved through the rigorous process of research and practice. By this new paradigm, it hopes to achieve the ultimate goal of establishing the field of design as a knowledgebased industry that is worthy of respect and emulation. Figure 1shows the pedagogical model derived from the model developed from Owen for the teaching in general.The strengths of this method are:To learn and practice the theory and design methodology through design project or cases from their peers.Through a selfdriven design and research project, the students are able to integrate and practice the theoretical and practical design knowledge learnt through the relevant courses into their own thesis project.Based on a studentcentred approach to provide a foundational learning setting for the students future career prospects.In terms of practice at the lower level, subjects like Ecodesign and Sustainability and Human Factors in Design were therefore constructed in the way that students would need to conduct field studies to identify problems from day-to-day activities, in order to propose potential solutions for such problems. Through this problemsolving approach, students can practice theories learnt from the classroom and reflect the usefulness of such knowledge. A design project was therefore applied to the examination, in order to test if the students are able to transform their understanding of theories into practice. For higher levels of study, students were encouraged to propose a selfdriven project which can demonstrate the skills and knowledge he/she has learnt from the previous few years. For example, in the Design Thesis, students need to propose a design proposal, plan the project layout, conducted field studies, user studies, technology enquiry, marketing studies, concept generation, detailed design and final presentation. Students need to integrate what they had learnt from design studio, with engineering and marketing methodologies. In addition, more minor projects were also introduced in the studio as it is strongly believed that more practice would be beneficial for the students.The merit of research in design is to provide the basis for building a unique body of knowledge to enrich design practice. Graduate research students should therefore recognise the need to discover new bodies of design knowledge as part of their professional responsibility. Thus, design research in postgraduate level has an important role to play in helping designers establish a knowledge base for design practice.However, the constraints and weaknesses of this approach are:As the field of knowledge become important in the teaching process which is very different from traditional classroom teaching, students may feel that the teaching is not deep enough.The workload of the students may become too tedious as they need to complete more projects within the same amount of time.