Ge Wang

What we make, makes us. This is the central tenet of Artful Design, a photorealistic comic book that examines the nature, purpose, and meaning of design. A call to action and a meditation on art, authenticity, and social connection in a world disrupted by technological change, this book articulates a fundamental principle for design: that we should design not just from practical needs but from the values that underlie those needs. Artful Design takes readers on a journey through the aesthetic dimensions of technology. Using music as a universal phenomenon that has evolved alongside technology, this book breaks down concrete case studies in computer-mediated toys, tools, games, and instruments, including the best-selling app Ocarina. Every chapter elaborates a set of general design principles and strategies that illuminate the essential relationship between aesthetics and engineering, art and design. Ge Wang implores us to both embrace and confront technology, not purely as a means to an end, but in its potential to enrich life. Technology is never a neutral agent, but through what we do with it—through what we design with it—it provides a mirror to our human endeavors and values. Artful Design delivers an aesthetic manifesto of technology, accessible yet uncompromising.

This book introduces an ethnographic case study of two English majors of ethnic minority at YUN, a local university of nationalities in southwest China. Drawing on the theories of post-structuralism and critical multiculturalism, this book mainly studies two female multilingual individuals in Yunnan, China. By scrutinizing university policies, curriculum, personal learning histories, and by discussing the unequal power relationship between national policies, school curricula, and ethnic multilingual learners,this book provides information at a micro-level on how the two ethnic minority students, who have acquired three languages (L1-native, L2-Mandarin Chinese, and L3-English), successfully navigate the Chinese higher education system as multilingual learners despite various tensions, difficulties, and challenges. How these students construct their multiple identities as well as significant factors affecting such identity construction is also discussed. This book will contribute to thescholarship of policy and practice in ethnic multilingual education in China by addressing the challenges for tertiary institutions and ethnic multilingual learners. The author also points out that multiculturalism as a discourse of education might help ease the tension of being an ethnic minority and a Chinese national, and reduce the danger of being assimilated or being marginalized.

This book introduces an ethnographic case study of two English majors of ethnic minority at YUN, a local university of nationalities in southwest China. Drawing on the theories of post-structuralism and critical multiculturalism, this book mainly studies two female multilingual individuals in Yunnan, China. By scrutinizing university policies, curriculum, personal learning histories, and by discussing the unequal power relationship between national policies, school curricula, and ethnic multilingual learners,this book provides information at a micro-level on how the two ethnic minority students, who have acquired three languages (L1-native, L2-Mandarin Chinese, and L3-English), successfully navigate the Chinese higher education system as multilingual learners despite various tensions, difficulties, and challenges. How these students construct their multiple identities as well as significant factors affecting such identity construction is also discussed. This book will contribute to thescholarship of policy and practice in ethnic multilingual education in China by addressing the challenges for tertiary institutions and ethnic multilingual learners. The author also points out that multiculturalism as a discourse of education might help ease the tension of being an ethnic minority and a Chinese national, and reduce the danger of being assimilated or being marginalized.