Social Impact in Design Education

Social design has become a significant part of design education system. The paper takes transformation of design education as background and focuses on in-depth analysis of social design related degree programs, curriculums, methodologies, and intuitional influence of organizations towards social design education shift. The paper addresses that how social impact affects the development direction of related disciplines and its relationship, discusses its complexity and extension, and actively integrates social resources to develop new forms of design practice. The pedagogy for social design employs a collaborative, systems-oriented approach to design and social thought through emphasizing design-led research. It helps students understand their role, define their engagement, and develop creative practices to address emerging and complex challenges by considering social, economic, political, and environmental issues from multiple perspectives and scales to generate transformative multimedia strategies. The paper brings a new perspective for future social design learning and demonstrates the social impact in design education in a general framework, and which help emerging designers understand the role they play in design practice worldwide, as well as foster an understanding of civic engagement and contrasts it with the idea of design as service.