To realize design that is easy for everyone to use, we need to think about not only beauty but also use and production, safety, prices, and many other factors. In other words, historically, culturally, scientifically, and technologically supported monozukuri is required. To address such high demand, this department has a curriculum that enables students to acquire knowledge of and insight into goals of design, knowledge for setting goals, and knowledge of methods to achieve goals. This department has some courses of study under the core “Education and Research on Design Technologies and Methods.” Within this system, students also acquire interdisciplinary knowledge, thereby obtaining the basic underlying knowledge shared by the various sciences. Such basics enable students to address diverse designs even for future new fields. To nurture such human resources is the aim of this department.

This course is for students of all courses of study in this department. Lectures are given and research is conducted from the perspective of design in the human, natural, and social sciences as well as the artwork and craftwork that are the basics for design. This subject group, which includes universal design and eco design, pursues a kind and sustainable society through human- and environment-friendly design and nurtures designers who can achieve this end.

Comprehensive lectures are given and research is conducted on a variety of specialized topics and technologies related to product design, including product planning and styling and production design. This course of study aims to nurture designers who can identify and solve various design-related issues on their own and create a new sense of value.

Students carry out general planning and design in diverse design fields such as products, interfaces, and advertisements from a human perspective.Specifically, the course fosters designers who can fulfill general design tasks in the five fields of information products (i.e., products with a human perspective), information interfaces (e.g., product interfaces), information content (e.g., the Web), information graphics (e.g., printed matter), and future design (new areas of design). Practical classes are taught by academic staff with design experience at Sony, IBM, Toppan Printing, and other industry leaders.