In April 2013, in Kyoto University, we launched the collaborative graduate program in design, which is more familiarly referred to as the Kyoto University Design School, an integrated five-year doctoral program aimed at cultivating people who can design social systems and architectures through collaboration with experts from diverse fields. The program seeks to nurture students into experts who can bring about changes in society by educating them in design as a lingua franca that unites people across disciplines.
The program is founded on five disciplines in four graduate schools: informatics, mechanical engineering, architecture, management, and psychology. Informatics, mechanical engineering, and architecture comprise what has become accepted as a design school’s core. We included management and psychology to establish the link between technologies and societies.
Design applications do not target only these five areas, of course, but address far-reaching challenges in environmental, healthcare, and disaster management, among many others. The Kyoto University Design School’s logo is three plus signs, underlining the goal of producing people with “+ shaped” confidence — those in different disciplines who are connected through design education.
Project: Portal Site
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Publications:
- Toru Ishida, Tetsuo Sawaragi, Kumiyo Nakakoji and Takushi Sogo. Interdisciplinary Education for Design Innovation. IEEE Computer, Vol. 50, No. 5, pp. 44-52, 2017.
Toru Ishida 