First Study of Design Fundamentals Seminar “Design Education and Cultural Design”

At Kyushu University’s Faculty of Design, we are tackling the foundations of the study of design with the objective of the systematization of design.

How should design be taught now? We welcomed Yutaka Yamauchi as a guest speaker at the first Study of Design Fundamentals Seminar, and held a discussion about the culture and opportunities inherent in service design.

According to Yamauchi, with regard to service, it is not enough to simply serve customers like a slave, you must challenge customers from the point of surpassing their intelligence and sensibilities. By doing this, customers are introduced to worlds they were unaware of: basically, they are tested and educated. Value is created within the joint development between designers who offer services and customers who receive them.

Yamauchi explained these using concepts including Hegel’s “Master and Slave Dialectic,” as well as the “Intersubjectivity” of Husserl’s Phenomenology. In Yamauchi’s words, service is “struggle.”

In contrast, Hiroshi Tamura, who questions the elitism of designers, presented the problem in various ways from the point of view of “Cultural Design.”

Rather than teaching design, there are educational opportunities within design itself. It was an exciting discussion.

［Time and Date］ Tuesday, May 1st, 2018 ３:00pm – 5:00 pm
［Location］ Kyushu University’s Ohashi Campus Administrative Building, 4th floor, large meeting room

［Presenter］
Yutaka Yamauchi
Associate Professor at Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Management, and holds additional posts with the Department of Economics, the Graduate Schools of Economics, and the School of Design. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Kyoto University’s Engineering Department in 1998, his Master’s degree in Computer Science from Kyoto University in 2000, and his Ph.D. in Management from UCLA’s Anderston School in 2006. After working as a researcher at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, he joined Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Management as a lecturer. He has held his current post since April, 2015. He is a fellow at Nanyang Technological University and the Institute on Asian Consumer Insight, a visiting professor at the Copenhagen Business School’s Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, and a trustee of the Society for Serviceology.

Hiroshi Tamura
Joint representative of Re:public Inc. Co-founder and executive fellow of Tokyo University’s i.school. Holds the additional posts of visiting professor at Kyushu University and the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. Known as a pioneer of design thought, he currently designs and manages a variety of open innovation projects which connect industry, academics, the public, and the private sector domestically and overseas, and searches for new “innovation ecosystems.” His main collaboration is “Todai Shiki Sekai Wo Kaeru Inobeshon No Tsukurikata” (Hayakawa Shoten).

［Inquiries］ Toru Koga (Faculty of Design, Kyushu University) toru(a)design.kyushu-u.ac.jp