新作坊 Humanity Innovation and Social Practice

Social design, as a knowledge domain with ambiguous definitions and unstable boundaries, poses fundamental challenges for pedagogical practice.While design thinking methodology provides standardized procedures, itsystematically excludes structural issues concerning power, resources, and norms. This study examines how a self-designed teaching tool, "Social Design Card 'Possession,'" operates in the classroom, using the "Introduction to Social Design" course at National Taiwan University's D-School as the research site. In-depth interviews with students reveal that the card-based tool produces markedly different effects in "case analysis" versus "design ideation" contexts. In case analysis, the epistemological friction generated by the cards tends to be productive—students are compelled to confront questions they would not otherwise raise, thereby reflecting on the structural conditions that shape design practice. However, in design ideation, the "object-first" script embedded in the cards conflicts with students' habitual "problem-first" logic, leading them to abandon the tool or use it ritualistically. This study argues that the effectiveness of teaching tools does not depend simply on design quality but is embedded within the relational network linking tools, students, and contexts of use.