ISDW: All courses

2026 ISDW Summary

What is the ISDW?

Students need to understand various cultures and perspectives to work on solving more global problems.
In this workshop, students from various design fields communicate and work with each other using English as a common language.

Additionally, group fieldwork is important in terms of sharing different cultures.
A goal of the ISDW is to help young people who want to become designers connect with the world and prepare better for the future global society.

Participating universities:

ISDW 2026

This year's workshop was held in Taiwan, with students from seven universities across five countries taking part. The workshop consisted of two days of fieldwork followed by four days of production.

Students had to work together in teams to create their projects, which required producing a poster and a two-minute video.

However, before finding a solution, it is essential to first understand the place itself. To do this, the students walked the streets of Keelung and experienced the city with their own eyes and bodies. Along the way, we also got to enjoy plenty of Taiwanese local food. The flavors were different from Japanese cuisine, but everything was delicious.

Design Theme

To create designs that truly fit a place, it is essential to understand the lives and culture of the people who live there—not by observing from the outside, but by actually sensing and experiencing them firsthand.

With this in mind, the theme of this year's ISDW was "Sensing and Experiencing: A Design Anthropology of KEELUNG".

Set in the port city of Keelung, this workshop aimed to uncover the city's appeal and challenges through on-site observation and experience, and to use these insights to create designs that solve Keelung's problems and help the city grow.

Eighteen groups worked on this theme. The students were given the question, "How might we help young international visitors discover, experience, and connect with Keelung in a more meaningful way?" Based on the issues they found during fieldwork, each group created a bold and original design.

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