On March 11, 2021, a teaching salon with the theme of "T-shaped design education - for industry and the future" was successfully held at the School of Art of Jiangsu University. Professor Hao Ninghui, Vice President and Doctoral Supervisor of the School of Urban Design of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, was the guest speaker of this lecture. In addition, Dean Han Rong, Associate Dean Zhang Kai and some teachers and students of Jiangsu University attended the salon.

Starting from the core theme of "T-shaped design education", Prof. Hao explained the market demand of "T-shaped design education" and the urgency of design education reform for university groups. Prof. Hao pointed out that "T-shaped design" mainly refers to the designers' profound design expertise and extensive knowledge of cross-border knowledge. In today's society, information is updated very fast. Hence, designers need to learn vertically and deeply in their own professional research field and need to broaden and develop their knowledge in related research fields, such as computer knowledge, business insight, project management, and other knowledge horizontally.

Professor Hao expressed the importance of "T-shaped design" with a very vivid image, saying that "good design = good business." However, in today's society, it is difficult to adapt to the diversified market demand by only conducting in-depth research on the knowledge of this discipline, and one's design may not become "good business". Taking art city, creative city and cultural city as examples, Prof. Hao pointed out that the current urban development can rely on the single path of knowledge in the field of urban planning and needs to consider the symbiosis between art, creativity, and culture. The intersection of knowledge from different disciplines enables the city to become a warm city that carries residents' feelings.

When talking about design education in colleges and universities, Prof. Hao pointed out that students are not only consumers, but also participants of education in today's society. Moreover, under new media communication, the channels for students to acquire knowledge are increasingly specialized and diversified, which is an excellent test for teachers' teaching content and level. Therefore, future education needs to balance the symbiotic relationship between teachers and students, dare to cultivate students' sense of trial and error, and encourage teachers and students to start a business together.

At the end of the salon, Professor Hao proposed cultivating the concept of lifelong learning. As practitioners in the design industry, they often engage in mechanized work and forget the power of innovation after stepping into the workplace. He mentioned that although large domestic factories have professional design departments, they still introduce design solutions from universities. Universities are constantly researching the most cutting-edge design knowledge, while people at work tend to focus on producing products and neglect to learn cutting-edge design knowledge. Therefore, as a design researcher, it is essential to establish the concept of lifelong learning to ensure that their design thinking can be in line with the frontier of the times and not be eliminated by the times.

The teaching salon activity ended with the warm applause of teachers and students. Vice President Zhang Kai made a summary of Professor Hao's wonderful sharing. The representatives of teachers in the audience thought that Professor Hao's sharing had a high standing and broad vision, which was very inspiring to the teaching work of design majors. As a national first-class undergraduate major, the product design major will absorb the cutting-edge teaching concepts and teaching perspectives in its future teaching, strive to cultivate excellent design talents in line with the future development of society, and contribute to the development and progress of the design discipline. The students also said that they would try to fill in the gaps in their future research and study and strive to make themselves "T-shaped design talents" recognized by society!