70 students from 42 universities and 8 countries including the United States, Denmark, Mexico, and Japan Students of all majors from around the world have gathered at the Yonsei International Campus (YIC) to attend YIDSS, a partnership between Yonsei University and the Danish-based design organization INDEX: Design to Improve Life. INDEX: is a nonprofit organization supported by the Danish royal family and is known for the biennial design award, the INDEX: Award. YIDSS is its first program to be organized abroad. The program moves beyond the conventional way of evaluating a certain design, which assesses the form and function of the final product. The program goes a step further than this by basing itself on the philosophy of “Design to Improve Life,” which sees the positive effect a certain design has on human lives as another assessment criteria. Throughout the four-week program, students designed creative and innovative solutions for the Millennium Development Goals, which were set by the United Nations to solve eight problems humans are facing. This was the year that the program was launched. Nevertheless, foreign students from countries as diverse as the United States, Denmark, Mexico, Japan, and more and national students from various schools including Hongik, Kookmin, and Hanyang University have come together for the program. Even during after class hours, they gathered at their dorm rooms or empty classrooms in the evening to complete their group projects and prepare for the final presentations of their creations. Sukyung Yu, a sophomore majoring in visual design at Hongik University, said, “While the conventional learning process for design consisted of producing an outcome and critiquing it, YIDSS focuses on how to maximize the design process based on open communication between the professors and students as well as among the students. Teams met up after class for their group projects and I enjoyed those times so much that they felt like nothing related to school work.” The conventional learning process for design moved from brainstorming discussions straight to production, although the learning process at YIDSS started with selecting a theme, then conducting in-depth interviews with final users of the product in order to fully understand possible problems, and then trying to come up with solutions to the problems users face through group projects led by the class members with diverse background knowledge. YIDSS consisted of not just design majors but also students from a diverse range of majors such as engineering, management, architecture, and more. Such diversity goes in line with the philosophy of INDEX:, which defines design as the “human capacity to shape and make our environments in ways that satisfy our needs and give meaning to our lives” and a designer as “anyone who finds the solution to a problem by creating something new.” Compared to other international summer programs hosted by universities in Korea, YIDSS showed a high ratio of foreign students with 29 out of 70 students being from abroad. This was especially satisfying for Korean students who hoped to be in a learning environment in which diverse cultures come together. This kind of learning environment is something that students from Europe or the United States are relatively more familiar with. Nevertheless, these students still had plenty to gain from YIDSS through exchanging ideas with Korean and Japanese students and going on field trips on a weekly basis. A set design major Nicole S. from the University of Texas, Austin said, “There were some conflicts at the beginning of the program among us all with different cultural and academic background, but through the design projects we learned how to communicate which became a positive force into our design process. Choosing to be a part of YIDSS was definitely a right decision for me.”