Curriculum Contents of Higher Design Educations in Japan and Taiwan

Abstract

The design education in Taiwan, in early post-war time, was influenced by design education from Japan and from the cooperation with the experts and scholars from U.S. and Europe. Nowadays the design educations in Japan and Taiwan are different. The purpose of this research is to investigate the curriculum contents of industrial design educations in Japan and Taiwan within 35 universities in Japan and within 30 universities (with 32 design departments) in Taiwan. The results of analysis revealed that design education in Japan is strongly influenced by marketing, management and the demand for various services, but the Taiwanese design education is still focused on technology and directly related with manufacturing processes.