A Hands — On Method of Design — Practice and Reflection
in the Chinese Context

1. Introduction: The Gap Between Design Education and Practice

Before introducing the “Leaning by Hands” method to China, I conducted a comprehensive mapping to understand the current state of inclusive design education and practice across Chinese universities. I found that many students were genuinely passionate and eager to create meaningful, socially responsive design work. Likewise, many teachers were not only strong in theory but also deeply committed to applying design in real-world settings. However, I also observed a clear gap: most inclusive design projects in China still concentrate on product and service design, especially in the context of industrial design. What’s often missing is a full process that starts from the user’s real experience and functional needs, and evolves through hands-on testing and iteration.

This realization struck a personal chord with me. With a background in interaction design and later training in product design at the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands, I’ve experienced a radically different design approach—one that starts not from screens or sketches, but from material, function, and physical interaction. That’s the essence of the “Leaning by Hands” method, and it’s what I’ve sought to bring back and adapt to the context of inclusive design in China.

2. The Method: Learn by Making, Evolve by Doing

In the Dutch design education system, the process I was trained in emphasized starting with making rather than imagining. When you think of a function or concept, your first move is not to draw it on a screen, but to build it—using different materials to prototype and test whether it works. The design process becomes a dynamic evolution shaped by constant dialogue with users, observation of real-life use, and technical insights from experts.

Within this process, the designer is not the one with all the answers. Instead, the designer acts as an observer and connector—someone who identifies unseen or unspoken needs, and transforms them into usable and meaningful design outcomes. This thinking is at the core of my Haptics of Cooking project, which started from basic hand-feel interactions and evolved into a line of inclusive kitchen tools that work equally well for blind and sighted users.

3. Practice: Piloting the Method in Chinese Classrooms

Bringing this methodology to China, I started by conducting interviews with design educators, and then collaborated with several of them to run experimental workshops with students. These sessions included short online design clinics, rapid prototyping challenges, and one-week immersive offline workshops.

During these workshops, students engaged in hands-on experimentation: prototyping, sketching, working with materials, and observing how their designs performed in domestic or everyday contexts. Through these exercises, they began to develop tactile intuition and understand the feedback loop between materials, users, and functionality. Many students were surprised at how much clearer their design ideas became once they started working with their hands instead of just visualizing.

However, I also identified several key challenges:

A lack of understanding of hands-on validation: Many students are used to digital modeling followed by outsourced fabrication. They often skip the testing phase where the richest feedback emerges.
Impatience and goal-oriented thinking: Some students viewed workshops as “crash courses” and expected quick results. This mindset left little room for slow, reflective, iterative design.
Weak foundational making skills: Due to over-reliance on screen-based tools, students often lacked basic familiarity with materials, form, and physical construction. Faced with functional challenges, they tended to resort to electronics or gadgets rather than thinking through the design structure itself.

These issues reflect a deeper structural gap in current design education in China: how to reestablish the relationship between the hand, the body, and the context of use.

4. Looking Ahead: From Pilot Experiments to Scalable Models

The pilot projects we’ve run so far have shown promising results. I’ve hosted one in-person workshop in Hangzhou and two online workshops that focused on rapid prototyping. In each case, I saw students’ genuine enthusiasm for design—they want to make things that are real, warm, and socially grounded. But I also clearly sensed a skills gap: while their desire to design is strong, their ability to execute those ideas through hands-on methods is often limited.

This mirrors a larger insight I discussed with Professor Zhong and others: inclusive design—whether in social projects or product development—is never a quick fix. It requires time, long-term commitment, and deeper integration between theory and practice. It’s not enough to host one-off events; what’s needed is a structural method that blends classroom learning with real-world application.

One example of this is our upcoming workshop centered around “functional storage design in daily living scenarios.” Students will work from a specific use case, create prototypes by hand, conduct user research, and refine their designs through iteration and testing. This kind of process-oriented, function-first training helps students internalize inclusive design not as an abstract idea, but as something that can be built, tested, and lived with.

Our next goal is to extend the timeline of these workshops—running longer, more immersive programs of a month or more. This would give students enough time to fully experience the ups and downs of real design work, develop their sensitivity to context, and truly connect what they think with what they do. This kind of slow, hands-on process might be exactly what’s missing from current design education—and what we urgently need to build a more inclusive future.

A Hands — On Method of Design — Practice and Reflection in the Chinese Context

A Hands — On Method of Design — Practice and Reflection
in the Chinese Context