Research Director:
Lecturer Yanfang Zhang, Faculty of Design
Keywords:
SDGs, design methods, human resource development

　　The SDGs Design International Awards is an award program to recognize design proposals produced by young students who have the potential to change the world. The program is design to encourage them while sharing their solutions with many people throughout the world for application in building a better society. Numerous wonderful design proposals have emerged through these SDGs awards over the four years they have been held to date.

　This research focuses on human resource development methods for design personnel able to take the systems proposed by the student ideas that emerge from the SDGs awards, making them specific and feasible, and implementing them in society, rather than letting them end as proposals alone.

　Specifically, the research developed an international formation comprised of the teachers and students of the Industrial Design Department, College of Mechanical Engineering, Donghua University in China, the Big Fish Community Design Center (Big Fish CDC) involved in SDGs in Shanghai, and local citizens to explore the potential of training design personnel through a project to implement a design proposal in society.

Fig. 1: Formation of this research

　The social implementation project consisted of primarily students interviewing the elderly living in Shanghai during the Covid-19 pandemic to ascertain their specific communications challenges in order to improve those communications. Improvement proposals were made, based on which the students worked with the elderly to produce works of art using old pottery and ceramics which were later displayed at a venerable shopping arcade as public art. As a result, the project served as an opportunity to restart communications between the elderly that were lost during the Covid-19 pandemic, and enabled an increase in the awareness regarding these types of social issues among a wider range of people than the project stakeholders alone (Fig. 2 and Fig. 3).

Fig. 2: Surveying for the SDGs education project

Fig. 3: Creating artworks for the SDGs education project　

　Through the project, the author was able to organize and analyze in detail the issues for human resource development for design personnel through cross-cultural collaboration through research involving Kyushu University in Japan, instructors and students from Donghua University in China, local companies (Big Fish CDC), and local elderly, from the standpoint of managing a project for social implementation to train SDGs design personnel. Four issues were identified, including A. the international collaboration formation, B. developing an environment for international collaborative training activities, C. the operation and management of educational activities, and D. evaluating educational activities, and the changes in those issues were organized over the phases of the project.

　The results of the research were published under the title, “Research on the Difficulties Faced in Developing Human Resources in the Design Field to Realize the SDGs Though Cross-Cultural Collaboration” at the 9th International Conference on Research into Design (ICoRD’23) held from January 9 through 11, 2023 at the India Institute of Science, Bangalore.

　Moving forward, the hope of the author is to continue the research and cover collaborative formations for SDGs education and environment building in Japan, establish hypotheses for taking ideas from educators involved in SDGs personnel education and applying them to society, and providing universal insights.

This research received a small grant in FY2022 from the Center for Designed Futures of Kyushu University.