List of Academic Courses

Type: Graduate Course
Industrial Design Department. Beijing Institute of Technology.
Name: Conceptual Design — fall 2016

During the last ten years coworking spaces went to the first two examples in San Francisco and London in 2006 to almost 10.000 spaces opened in 2016. This incredible growth needs to be interpreted by design disciplines to ensure the quality and success of contemporary work environments.
Design a product or a furniture system that support collaboration in coworking environments for the next generation of knowledge worker in your cultural context.

Expected Deliverables:

• One or more prototypes of your product or furniture system
• One or more narrative representation of the UX of your project (video or series of images)

Type: Graduate Course
Industrial Design Department. Beijing Institute of Technology.
Name: Creativity and Realization — spring 2017

This course take the shape of Coworking Design Lab on the emerging practice of coworking and its related environments, product-systems and UXs.
The students work along industry stakeholders from the public and private sector as well as with users to co-design and site-specific solutions for the course partner 3ESPACE (www.3espace.org) and research on the systemic state-of-the-art of the coworking industry in Beijing and more generally in China.
The course project analyses Placemaking and User Experience Design of collaborative workspaces (coworking) with particular attention to constructing new scenarios that enrich collaboration for knowledge workers and socially engaged citizens.
Students will receive an open brief built in collaboration between BIT and 3ESPACE, and base user research activities and planned co-creation sessions in the 3ESPACE coworking space and incubator. The research will inform the development of design pieces in form of physical systems for collaborative work within the coworking environment.

Expected Deliverables:

• User Research presentation
• Product-systems, workplace equipment and tools. Focusing mainly on their semantic innovation and user experience.

Type: Graduate Course
Industrial Design Department. Beijing Institute of Technology.
Name: Product Design Analysis— Fall 2017

This course pivots around the analysis of the ambiguity of the value of design as process (how we conceptualize and develop artifacts) vs outcome (the artifact themselves).
The students are introduced to a critical understanding of the history of design objects, with an overview on British, German, American, Japanese, Italian and Scandinavian design schools of thoughts and case studies.
Through this visual content, the concept of design languages and narratives is introduced, with commentary on Eclecticism, Modernism and Postmodern thinking.
This historical excursus is used support the contemporary paradigm of co-design and collaborative (work) environments to analyze, contextualized in the current design situation in China, with a comparative observation of Western practices.
In particular methods and of Design Thinking and Speculative Design are suggested, for the product design assignment of the course , that culminates with the setup of 1:1 prototypes of the projects in the University’s gallery space and their test with users.

Expected Deliverables:

• Drawing of finished product with future element
• Presentation of the process, prototype images and renders
  Description of the test experiment in space

Type: Undergraduate Course
Industrial Design Department. Beijing Institute of Technology.
Name: Mechanical and Structural basis —fall 2017

In this practical course, students are guided through the structural analysis of forms within products and the built environment.
By exploring, categorizing, hacking their characteristics they learn learn how to design them and apply them creatively to new product concepts.
In the project assignment of the course, students are prompted to think ‘how might we’ use collaborative factors as design criteria and build the necessary structures to ergonomically host collaborative interactions.
They do that through early stage or conceptual prototyping of structures that intentionally push radical solutions. The prototypes become apparatus to study interactions in a given context and allow the emergence of product ideas to develop further as final outcome of the course.

Expected Deliverables:

• Product prototype with a focus on innovative structural design

Type: Undergraduate Course
Industrial Design Department. Beijing Institute of Technology.
Name: Integrating Modeling Foundation 2—spring 2018

This is a introductory Speculative Design course to allow students to acquire conceptual and practical experience in analyzing a socio-cultural context, draw insights from research and translate them into design directions and product development.
The course project brief is based on observing their own university campus living environment and design furniture for the near future.

Expected Deliverables:

• Speculative scale prototype of product
• Speculative Narrative of the product scenario

Type: Undergraduate Course
Industrial Design Department. Beijing Institute of Technology.
Name: Sketching 2 —fall 2018

In this advanced sketching course, the practice of visualizing is applied to the development of a human centered design brief.
Students are asked to follow to choose a commercial or work environment in their area and, by only using sketching, conduct user research, highlight opportunities, develop concept for spatial and interaction improvements, deliver refine technical drawings of their designs.
The craft of sketching is so articulated at different level of fidelity and sophistication, allowing students to gain sensibility on what type visualization serve the purpose of different design phases.

Expected Deliverables:

• Four types of sketching artworks: research, visualization of opportunities, concept design, schematic design, technical design.

Type: Undergraduate Course
Industrial Design Department. Beijing Institute of Technology.
Name: Thematic Design— fall 2019

This course explores future forms of workplaces and services for work and productivity, for both independent workers (freelance) and employees.
Coworking and shared spaces for work are affecting the accessibility and architecture of our cities. The course requires to reflect on how users interact with these new businesses and how places for work integrates in their external ecosystem. What are the implication of these services with the development of the workforce, workers lifestyles and the occupations they support?
By researching what are the places and tools of work in the main Chinese cities, and how culture, rituals, behaviors and policies affect experiences of work environments, this course teaches how to design employees experiences integrated in different services like mobility or hospitality and different organisational structures.

Expected Deliverables:

• UX research of contemporary workplaces
• Prototype of cost-saving and sustainable office furniture units

Type: Undergraduate Course
Industrial Design Department. Beijing Institute of Technology.
Name: Project Design 3 — Spring 2019

This course let students fully and systematically understand and practice design thinking processes starting from the connections between technology and social life.

Main teaching content:
1. Let students comprehend and understand the design thinking starting from technology;
2. Let students understand the reasonable connections between technology and social life;
3. Teach students to combine technology with social life;
4. Let students have the ability to build a product system with technology.

Students are challenged to ‘design’ the design job of the future, in the form of a creative businesses in the 21st century.
How can we design expand to new fields to support society adapting to fast technological changes? New design occupations will be based on new rituals and interactions, generate new products, carried on in new spaces and result new employee experiences.
In this course, we explore what it means to be a designer in the near future. The course is a speculative journey through possible new roles of designers in society fueled by socio-technical possibilities and industry transformations.
The trans-disciplinary design fields that are introduced in this course are:-
- Designers for science: Bio inspired design, biohacking, trans-human design
- Designers for entrepreneurship: design making and smart supply chains
- Designers for business: facilitating decision making with non
- Designers for AI: create virtual realities and AI services and understand the ethic of this technology

Expected Deliverables:

• Film and photos that document the future scenario and product
• Final exhibit of their project and work tools, through technical visualizations and diagrams of the future job designed.

Type: Graduate Course
Industrial Design Department. Beijing Institute of Technology.
Name: Integrated Design— Spring 2019
In collaboration with Prof. Jiang Ke

This course focuses on two main characteristics of Integrated Design: the cross disciplinary approach and the design product- service experiences.
This course explores how to adopt “old technologies” to apply them to smart environments of the present: the living, the work and the public environments.
The idea of ‘smart’ is here challenged to be filled with new human and cultural meanings. The course aim at smart technology that is usable for long time and integrated with the culture and heritage of communities.
Digital manufacturing play a role in renewing these practices, technology, craft and material culture.

Expected Deliverables:

• Product-service prototype and business models

Type: Graduate and Undergaduate Course
Industrial Design Department. Beijing Institute of Technology.
Name: Thematic Design and Thematic Design 3—Spring 2020

During the exceptional time of the recent epidemic, availability of products and services might be limited in Chinese cities, and access to public areas restricted to prevent health risks.

Considering this extreme situation, this course wants to be an opportunity to observe and reflect on what objects are really necessary in our daily life, what objects don’t exist yet that might be useful in our future.
Starting from students’ self-reflections, the course is dedicated to the design of sustainable products to reduce consumption and waste, with a focus on design for ‘disassembly’ and recycling.

Expected Deliverables:

• Products concepts and prototypes that follow the the Circular Economy principles