To promote intellectual exchange and inspire creative and design thinking of students from diverse backgrounds, the Department of Computer Science, HKBU, the Unit of Design, Kyoto University and Institute of Creative Industries Design, National Cheng Kung University jointly organized the 2018 Joint Workshop on Design for Sustainability (D4S) held on 5-8 April and 25-27 May 2018 in Kyoto and Hong Kong respectively.
Theming “Design for Social Innovation Transfer”, this joint design workshop aims to allow the participants to apply technological and cultural transfer from Kyoto and Tainan to Hong Kong via intercultural and interdisciplinary collaboration. Celebrating its 7th anniversary, this workshop was organized in two parts, where the first part was held in Kyoto on 5 – 8 April for preliminary ideation and the second part in Hong Kong on 25-27 May for implementation. This design workshop has been a unique learning opportunity, in which students learn to care our community and design creative solutions for HK social challenges by collecting global wisdom.
51 students and faculty members from National Cheng Kung University, Kyoto University and Hong Kong Baptist University with diverse backgrounds including business, architecture, engineering, social informatics, geography, communication and computer science, etc. were divided into six groups to come up with proposals for social innovation transfer in Hong Kong. The scope includes education, heritage, lifestyle childcare, environment and urban design. The workshops were featured with lectures, fieldwork, interviews, intensive group discussion sessions for generating innovative and interdisciplinary solutions, based on their first-hand information, students also had opportunities to do prototyping and real implementation with local partners from NGOs, schools, Government offices and district communities.
Honorable guests were invited in the HK part. Mr. Ambrose Cheung, Chairman of Sham Shui Po District Council, and Prof. Bernard Suen, Project Director, Adjunct Associate Professor from the Chinese University of Hong Kong were happy to see the fruitful findings from the groups and shared their views on social transfer with participants. Participants also appreciate the collaborations and fruitful discussions with Mr. Stephen KC HO, the Senior Engineer from Government Transportation Department, as well as Ms. Gabrielle Ka Po HO, Senior Project Manager from Green Sense.
Workshop Organizing Committees Prof. Toru Ishida, Dr. Chia Hang Yang and Prof. Jiming Liu were surprised and satisfied by the creative ideas presented by the groups. As co-organizer, Ms. Cindy CHAN, the director of Center for Innovative Service Learning, appreciated that the workshop provided an international platform, with intercultural and interdisciplinary learning opportunity, which motivates participants to solve social problems using Human-Centered Design. Participant LI Hao (PhD in Computer Science, Year 2) appreciated the workshop motivated participants to think out of the box. NG Pui Yan (CS, Year 3) thanked the workshop to offer her a chance to see different views.
Being an excellent platform for exchanging ideas among the teams and facilitators for intercultural and interdisciplinary collaborative problem solving, the workshop was well-received. For more information about the workshop, please visit:
http://www.comp.hkbu.edu.hk/designworkshop/.
