Sensory Design and Design Thinking for Design Educating

Abstract

This paper aims to highlight the critical role of the interdisciplinary integration of sensory design and design thinking in education, particularly in educating designers. Through a literature review analysis, the paper explicates the importance of integrating sensory design and design thinking in design education and puts forward a didactic method to deal with specific problems encountered in design education. A case study conducted at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute has been used as an experiment for a new didactic method. Students could choose any material and explored its sensory expressions, discovering emotional and narrative content. Then, students selected traditional handicrafts to enhance and add new sensory expressions, reinforcing and clarifying the emotional expressions. Ultimately defined the design theme and students' work were the final output.  The purpose is to summarise the results and problems of teaching activities through an analysis of course content. The didactic method emphasises the student experience and the innovative design outcome. The didactic method was tested in design education, suggests possible development trends in the application of interdisciplinary education to provide the impetus for improving existing design education models.