Design, Technology and Society Minor

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Overview

Welcome to the Design, Technology, and Society (DTS) Minor!

This ‘road map’ will guide you to successfully completing the minor.

What is DTS?

The DTS minor is a design-focused variation of Science, Technology and Society (STS) studies that emphasizes critical analysis of the social dimensions of design processes and projects. Grounded in SUTD’s design curriculum, students in the DTS concentration will be able to cast the critical eye of the social scientist and the reflective sensitivity of the humanist to inform and augment the generation of creative design outcomes that address pressing contemporary issues in a positive, productive way.

The DTS Mission

To educate future design practitioners who can:

  • Identify and respond critically, creatively, and constructively to the social, economic, and political forces that drive design trends and social phenomena.
  • Reflect on, analyze, and foresee the ways in which their design outcomes will benefit, disrupt, or otherwise affect the lives of individuals, societies, and the natural and built environment.

Course Requirements

To graduate with the DTS minor, students must successfully complete the following courses:

  1. “Social Science: Understanding Behaviour, Culture & Society” (HASS 02.003, formally “Theorizing Society, the Self, and Culture”)
  2. The DTS core course, “Interventions in Design, Technology, and Society” (HASS 02.147TS)
  3. Any combination of four courses from the list below. This list will continue to grow as new courses are added.

Students will know which HASS electives count towards the DTS minor by the ‘TS’ at the end of the course code. HASS electives with ‘HT’ at the end of the course code can also be counted. For example, 02.104TS, 02.135HT.

Step-by-Step Guidelines

  1. Declare DTS Minor before the beginning of Term 4. This can be done in the student portal.
  2. Term 4 – Enroll in the DTS core course.
  3. Term 5 through 8 – Enroll in one of the approved DTS electives from the table below.

For more information on our application process, please refer to this document..

For students who intend to participate in Global Exchange Programme (GEXP), the overseas HASS courses must be approved for DTS mapping.  All student’s requests for new course mapping must be submitted with a brief justification on why the class meets the criteria for the minor.

DTS Electives

Course Number Course Title
02.102HT The World Since 1400
02.104TS The History of International Development in Asia: The Role of Engineers and Designers
02.130TS Slums, Squatters, and Smart Cities: History and Theory of Urban Planning
02.135HT The Question of Technology
02.140TS Shaping Futures: Innovation, Work and Society
02.145TS Surveys and Experiments in the Social Sciences
02.148HT Geographies of Money and Finance
02.151HT Digital Worlds, Space and Spatialities: Geographical Perspectives on Digitalisation
02.152TS Urban Theory
02.153TS A History of Nuclear Strategy, Design, Technology and Society
02.155HT Design Anthropology
02.159HT Equitable Tech: Reimagining Our Digital Infrastructures
02.160TS Designing Digital Technology for Children and Teens
02.165TS Urban Southeast Asia: Diversity, Sustainability and Change
02.166TS Empathy: An interdisciplinary concept (Special Topic)
02.167HT Fashion: East and West (Special Topic)
02.170HT History of Surveillance in Modern Asia
02.201TS Digital Sociology
02.204TS Technology and the Self
02.210TS Who Gets Ahead? Sociology of Social Networks and Social Capital
02.212TS The Visual Culture of Science and Technology
02.216TS Human Behaviour, Technology and Design
02.218TS Introduction to Psychology
02.219TS Rice Cultures: Technology, Society, and Environment in Asia
02.220TS How the Things People Make, Make People: Material Things in Social Life
02.222TS Unnatural Disasters
02.225TS Building, Dwelling, Belonging: An Anthropology of Domestic and Vernacular Architecture
02.228TS Design in the Anthropocene
02.230TS Health Communication and Behavior Change
02.231TS Transportation Policy and Technology in Urban Progress

Employment Prospects and Industry Support

The DTS minor complements and supplements the students’ technical skills with theoretical, conceptual, and critical frameworks for gauging the impact of their work on wider social, cultural, political, and economic systems.

SUTD students gain practical design skills from their major in either Engineering Product Development, Engineering Systems and Design, Architecture and Sustainable Design, or Information Systems Technology and Design and the DTS minor will round out their mindsets and technical competencies.

Feedback from industry partners:

“Technology has become a critical enabler for economic and social transformation. Hence, it is important for technologists to be keenly aware of the wider sociocultural, political and economic context, and be able to incorporate these dimensions into their design decisions and technological solutions. The introduction of this proposed minor is timely as it will prepare and train SUTD’s engineering and architecture students to develop a much needed well-rounded understanding of the role of technology and design in today’s world.”

“What differentiates this Design, Technology and Society minor is its excellent slate of electives that exposes budding practitioners to broader, more macro and often critical aspects of society that new practitioners often lack exposure in. I believe this set of multi-disciplinary electives is a step in the right direction to groom the next generation of more mindful and socially aware design thinkers and technology tinkerers”