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Describe the next generation of design professionals?

What can design educators and industry professionals do to improve American design education?

  • Recent op/ed pieces in leading online design publications assert that American design education is "a mess and produces weak graduates". How can industry and academia work together to clarify design education objectives?

  • Answer:

    As a design educator who read those pieces I have to say that they are overly generalized, or more precisely, not looking to forward schools, and just focusing on the schools that are slower to evolve. But even that being said there are huge issues between industry & education. Here's my take: 1. Cost cutting in industry has led to an abandonment by industry in education. Design Edu is vocational in nature & requires deep connections & support w/ practice in industry. Internships are growingly sparse & less & less funded. Both issues reduce the numbers of talented students from getting even the most basic requirements. Few if any organizations in industry invest money directly into school programming. Even just human resources would be a boon. I.e., make every lead/director position be required to spend X hours & Y budget on supporting EDU per year. The orgs that do do this get access to the best recruits in return for their efforts, reducing HR budgets in turn. This is probably most valuable at the graduate level than the undergraduate as recruiting costs are higher for higher level practitioners. 2. There is just too much to learn in too short a time frame. Industy has become less focused in their requirements for X type of designer. Even a "pure" software designer has to learn more than what is truly feasible in a standard 4yr degree that also needs to include basic liberal arts: english, math, foreign Lang, social science, humanities, art history, etc. And you'll see below there is more we need to teach than we can. This is all due to 2 issues: 1. The mad rush to converge design talent into single individuals instead of collaboratives teams. 2 the steadily increasing requirement to have full designers ready to hit the ground equal to their peers who have a few years experience. It used to be industry continued edu & today it expects people who are fully ready for the job out of a bachelor's program. Now let's look at the latest complaints re: design education (both pointed squarely at Industrial Design, though there have been a ton of complaints of graphic design and architecture as well.) My reading of the 2 articles in question can be summarized in 2 points: 1. students aren't taught enough (Norman speaks to this) 2. students aren't taught enough, nor to connect through all they do learn (Amit's point). Notice how that ties to my #2? NOT ENOUGH, eh? so let's focus on that for a moment. Time despite Einstein is a constant in our world. We can ask more of time, but it has it limits. This means we need more of it. We can get it from industry which they don't want to do, or we can get it from lower edu. This is something that a few people are working on. I would argue that while this is a good idea and necessary one, it is not always appropriate. Design is complex. It requires exploration and a mature mind to grasp at deeper levels. It requires practice. So while getting started and teaching what Bill Moggridge has called the Awareness Level (search CIID Bill Moggridge for presentation on Design EDU), but that's the easy part. In my presentation to Interaction South America (http://davemalouf.com/?p=1954) I outline what an interaction designer needs to be successful. Way too much in there to fit in 4 years. One answer is to create an edu paradigm similar to that of Architecture which has a Masters of Architecture which has become the baseline for professional practice. It is usually a 5 year program. But going back to the crux of the question ... How can industry help? The answer is really quite simple ... Change! Realize that educating designers is in YOUR best interest. That investing in education is investigating in both your future hires, your current hires and your community of practice. Should curriculum's change? Yea, I'd say here and there, but I don't see curriculum's as the main problem in the context of this question. I have learned that in Europe. Public schools are not allowed to accept direct financial contributions from corporations, so maybe this policy needs to be re-evaluated (maybe not). I have a ton more thoughts, but I've taken up enough space here.

Dave Malouf at Quora Visit the source

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The Problem from a Student's Point of View In recent years design has become a very sought after and lucrative career choice. The field is very deceptive to an outsider. People harbor the misconception that design is all fun and games, and that it is "easy". Some even use the words design and art interchangeably, as if to say that the field has no rules and practitioners have complete creative freedom in whatever they do. The explosion of social media, non-sense blogs and spoon-feeding tutorial sites have added more fuel to the fire. The design education system is not the only thing that is to blame. Many students come into this field with the wrong mindset. Our generation is selfish and cares less about things that do not seem to directly affect us. We need to be more aware of what's happening around us. I think developing interest in subjects other than design will take us a far way. Schools alone cannot teach us everything. It is up to us to extract as much knowledge as we can. Re: Design Schools and the Industry There are two kinds of design schools: Process schools - ones which focus mostly on developing the design process. Good process work is essential, but if students don't get to apply what they've learned, what's the point? In the end they have nothing to show for all that mind mapping, sketching and brainstorming. And the bitter truth is that if you don't have anything to show for all your hard work, it is almost impossible to get an internship. Portfolio schools - schools which focus mostly on developing the student's portfolio. The students have a lot of work to show at portfolio reviews but they have trouble describing their work and expressing their ideas. This is when the interviewer loses confidence in the student. Schools should strike the right balance between process and application. But schools alone cannot make this happen. Especially the "application" part. Industry involvement has to be there for this to happen.

Sumit Paul

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