A Study on Instruction of Participatory Design Applied in Rural Community Design
Li Shu, Lu

Department and Graduate School of Digital Media Design , National Yunlin University of Science and Technology

Abstract

In recent years, global education trend is based on cultivation of interdisciplinary talents, encouragement for teachers and students to enter the communities and reinforcement of relationship between university education and local communities to trigger more possibilities of social innovation and fulfill University Social Responsibility (USR) as the overall objectives of instruction. Besides, nowadays, rural life style is changing and it intends to transform aging rural life with declining communities. Design is originally designers^ complicated and diverse thinking activity in order to solve problems. In modern time, due to changeable environmental factors, designers^ one-way problem-solving can no longer achieve the goals. Therefore, based on participatory design and by interdisciplinary and cross-school curriculum and community residents^ cooperation, this study analyzes interaction among related personnel in instructional situations in order to develop rural local cultural characteristics and design value added products.
By double-teacher (teacher and designer) curriculum structure, participatory design workshop, participant observation and interview, this study analyzes interaction in overall teaching process. According to research findings, (1) in terms of design progress, problems encountered by rural community can be discovered and solved by participatory design of ^Three-Three Model^. It includes three types of related personnel, such as community residents, teachers & designers and students of different fields and three phases of development, such as study of cultural and historical data and field problems of the first stage, problem definition and design development of the second stage and design proposition and evaluation modification of the third stage. (2). In terms of instructional process, this study proposes ^KM-4D-E^ instructional model, including theoretical knowledge and methodology construction (KM-Knowledge & Methodology), field observation experience (1D-Discover), problem discovery and definition (2D-Define), design thinking and creativity development (3D-Develop), design execution and manufacturing (4D-Deliver) and finally proposition and evaluation (E-Evaluation), which are introduced in instructional situation of rural community design. Subsequently, this study will continue the research and analysis by the concept of action study as the criteria to modify participatory design model based curriculum instruction.

Keywords: Participatory Design, Interdisciplinary Collaboration, Rural Community, Design Teaching

Topic: Creative Design