Researcher, MIT AgeLab
Sheng-Hung Lee, IDSA is a designer, maker, educator, MIT AgeLab researcher, and MIT xPRO course experience designer. He is inspired by multiple domains of knowledge and different perspectives, and he thrives on creating new value for clients on multidisciplinary teams. He is trained as an industrial designer and electrical engineer, and his approach to problem-solving is influenced by his passion for how design and technology impact and can be integrated into society. He has been invited to be a jury member for multiple international design competitions, including IDEA and Spark Design Awards. He is a member of the World Design Organization (WDO), Asia Designer Communication Platform (APD), Taiwan Society of Technology and Sociology, Phi Tau Phi Scholastic Honor Society, and China Technical Consultants Inc.
Lee graduated with a double bachelor’s degree (Hon.) in Industrial Design and Electrical Engineering from National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) in Taiwan. His work has won prestigious awards, including an IDEA (Gold), iF Award (Gold), Braun Prize, Core77 Design Award, Red Dot (Best of the Best), Spark Design Award, and European Product Design Award (Gold). His work has been showcased at Dubai Design Week, Venice Design Week, and the Cooper Hewitt museum. In 2019, he won a designer in residence scholarship sponsored by the Germany government, EMMA Creative Center, and Pforzheim University to stay and to exhibit his design in Stuttgart, Germany. Lee taught product design at Fudan University Shanghai Institute of Visual Art and Detao Masters Academy as an adjunct associate professor from 2015 to 2019.
Statement of Candidacy (2023-2024 term)
To me, the meaning of this leadership role, At-Large Director – Awards, is more than just focusing on design award-related events. Instead, what I want to experiment with is scaling the impact of winning IDSA Awards and leveraging the candidates’ participation and the jury’s evaluation process to make both experiences more engaging and meaningful, integrating design education value.
1. Contribute to IDSA communities and beyond
I want to use the At-Large Director – Awards leadership position to take on more responsibilities and provide more community-wide contributions. I want to promote IDSA awards as being not only about winning awards for candidates, but also about raising people’s awareness of the value of design and of using the design process to tackle systemic social-technological challenges. This aligns with the vision of IDSA. The people who receive IDSA awards are viewed as the highest design standard, for the culture and values that we all believe in.
2. Bridge the gap between the design industry and design academics
Since design is an applied science and a team sport, I want to leverage this leadership role to foster more meaningful collaborations between industry and academic research. This can start from how we nominate suitable candidates through recommendations from our IDSA communities and experts for IDSA awards across all categories, especially considering the balance between the candidates from design academia and design practitioners.
3. Expand the definition of industrial design to integrated design
This leadership position would be an opportunity for me to think about how to expand the definition of industrial design from a product focus to a service- and experience-driven focus, and consider design ethics, including inclusiveness. Why does this matter to IDSA awards? Only if we can reshape the definition of “ID” with more inclusive and diverse considerations, can we confidently show the public that the IDSA award is also evolving, because we celebrate people who are not only good at design, but also care about our world with their heart and soul.
4. Promote the value of design education and the design process
For me, learning how to win design awards is one way to learn design and use it to pursue higher levels of understanding. The purpose of pursuing this path: to commit themselves to the design and creativity field. Our goal is not to help candidates win as many design awards as possible. In fact, our ultimate goal is to empower people who win design awards or design leaders through their influence and impact to improve our design education, allowing more people without any design background to learn how to appreciate the value of design and even want to learn about design and its creative process.
The above four key points: 1. Contribute to IDSA communities and beyond, 2. Bridge the gap between the design industry and design academics, 3. Expand the definition of industrial design to integrated design, and 4. Promote the value of design education and the design process are my motivation and this also explains what I want to achieve if I am elected to serve as At-Large Director – Awards for the IDSA community.
Thank you and I hope to get your support and vote.
Best regards,
Sheng-Hung Lee 李盛弘
Re-Envisioning a Hybrid Participatory Design Workshop: People, Pedagogy, and Process
During the pandemic, we leveraged the resources from academia and industry to explore new, creative ways to conduct hybrid participatory workshops, emphasizing product and service prototyping during the human-centered design process.
In the study, we defined “hybrid” as two ways through which participants communicate: 1) through technologies to have virtual discussions and 2) in person. We experimented with using a hybrid participatory workshop as a new research medium and design methodology to explore how to design an immersive hybrid participatory workshop experience that can inform and inspire participants across the globe to solve systemic social-technological design challenges.
We created a series of assistive toolkits: one interactive workbook and five tutorials on a website to empower workshop participants to not only build early indoor footwear concepts out of paper and a service model for older adults, but also enable them to have more transparent and interactive communication, build trust, and extend connections through their group discussion.
The goal of the research is to explore and identify design opportunities by conducting a hybrid participatory workshop.
Carbon Neutrality in Makerspaces: Circular Makerspace Evaluation Toolkit (CMET)
In this workshop, Sheng-Hung Lee will present the concept of circular makerspaces, using Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s campus to demonstrate carbon neutrality in makerspaces and introduce the Circular Makerspace Evaluation Toolkit (CMET) to show its process and value—from inspiration to ideation to implementation. During the workshop, Sheng-Hung will provide a series of selected makerspace/lab scenarios on campus, as well as case studies with identified design challenges, for participants to experience, discuss, and learn by using CMET.
Sheng-Hung also co-presented the workshop “Reimagining Remote Co-creation During COVID” with Ziyuan Zhu, IDSA.
Experimenting With Design Thinking and System Engineering Methodologies
The paper explores the history of two methodologies: “Design Thinking” as shaped by the Industrial Design community and “Systems Engineering” which was developed by NASA and government-led R&D. How can these two methodologies that evolved from radically different environments be combined to tackle systemic challenges that our society faces today? The paper explores the possibilities for human-centered system design and introduces new frameworks that can help designers evolve their craft for the decades ahead.
