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Design Schools: Please Start Teaching Design Again

By Allan Chochinov - March 23, 2007

in design.edu

Dan Saffer over at Adaptive Path posted a short, absolutely perfect piece a couple weeks ago on the state of design education. With Dan's permission, we're reposting the entire piece here. Required reading. The original AP link is here. Dan's site is here. His book, Designing For Interaction is here. [No blockquote on this one--we need the pixels!] Design Schools: Please Start Teaching Design Again It's that time of year when Adaptive Path wades through stacks of design school students' resumes, looking for summer interns and potential hires. As I was doing this, a trend that that I had suspected became clear to me: quite a few design schools no longer teach design. Instead, they teach "design thinking" and expect that that will be enough. Frankly, it isn't. I was taught that design has three components: thinking, making, and doing. (Doing is the synthesis, presentation, and evaluation of a design; the bridge between thinking and making.) If all design schools are teaching is the thinking, well, they are missing the other two thirds of the equation. They have abandoned craft for craze. Thinking without the making and doing is almost useless in the job market, unless you want to work at Accenture or some other big consulting firm. It probably won't help you get a job as a designer in a studio environment. You'd be better off getting a degree in Humanities; at least you would be well-rounded. D schools are doing a serious disservice to their students by only teaching them "design thinking" when a class in typography or mechanics or drawing might not only give them a valuable skill, but also teach them thinking and making and doing--all at the same time. For design to be truly useful as a profession and as a discipline, designers can't just use "design thinking" to come up with strategies and concepts. Dare I suggest that those are much easier than building a product? Some notes on a whiteboard and a pretty concept movie or storyboard pales in comparison to the messy world of prototyping, development, and manufacturing. It's harder to execute an idea than to have one, genius being 99% perspiration and all. What gets lost without the making is the detail work that makes us designers in the first place, the small parts where we earn our paychecks. Details are also where we earn the respect of the developers, businesspeople, and manufacturers who make what we prototype real(er). Details often get overlooked in just "thinking" projects, as do constraints. Constraints are somehow less solid in the world of thought than they are in the world of making. What we're going to end up with is a generation of "innovators" who are MBAs in MFAs' clothing, who can neither create or run businesses like entrepreneurs can, nor design products and services like designers can. It's the worst of both worlds. What we as employers are searching for are people who can do as well as think. This isn't to say that we're looking for glossy stylists either: we want designers who create thoughtful, meaningful designs: designs that pay attention to details, and have emotion and craft in them, as well as reason and cleverness. The world desperately needs those designers. Start making them again.

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Stucon

17 years ago

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This post has spawned a few pages of commentary in the discussion forum. Check it out:

http://boards.core77.com/viewtopic.php?t=12490
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Rob

17 years ago

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I'm a fourth year student, so am almost finished my course (which has a strong emphasis on design thinking) and what I've found is that there are all types coming out of the course. Some are sketchers and CAD'ers and others are more conceptual (like me). I think it depends on what you are looking for when you hire someone, I think you can find the person with the skills you want if you look in the right places, go directly to the schools maybe.

But for me I worked out that all the physical hands on skills had been learnt in the first two years of the course ie sketching, model making etc. Since then I have been concentrating on developing my thinking, innovation and entreuprenurial skills so that I can choose my own path once I finish studying.

I am not so worried about the physical skills because once learnt they can be taken to whatever level that you choose it just takes practise and time after that experience follows. However thinking skills are different ... the ability to be able to bend my head in innovative ways is, for me, the most important skill I have learnt in the course.

This means that I have made the choice not work within what, for me, is a more traditional paradigm of product design but to move into what I see as other more broader areas of cross disciplinary fields of design and architecture.

Still I accept the point that if there are graduates and students looking for work in a more traditional product design consultancy then they should definitely brush up on their 'doing' skills as from my experience they will not get through the door...

Rob
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bryan

17 years ago

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First off...agree 100%. Definitely an issue in our day and age. Secondly...I have to agree with Stiven. Balance is something that is so hard to teach and it's all about what the student puts into his classes and OUTSIDE his classes. Design isn't what you can teach in a class. It's a passion, a desire. These classes teach you the basics, but it's what you do with them afterwards that counts. And last to all the designers hear disagreeing with this post...maybe he's not talking about you! If you feel you've achieved the balance, then stop complaining and get some backbone, he's not attacking you. It's your counterparts who did little or nothing to really grow their design skills and knowledge of programs, techniques, etc. that he's talking about. Great article. Thanks.
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msh93

17 years ago

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I find this an outstanding view on the industry. I'm a designer with 14yrs experiance and a 2yr degree. I was lucky enough to find a job with an engineering firm that cared more about natural talent than a skin on a wall. Fortunatly I have a talent to think thru all the senarios of what can go wrong. Bad thing is I'm accused of being the naesayer, when in fact I'm doing my job as a designer. Too bad the 4yr degree is worth so much.....
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Stephanie Cleary

17 years ago

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I couldn't agree more that students aren't learning about manufacturing processes as they should be. But it is easy to say "Design Schools: Please Start Teaching Design Again" without actually looking at why schools are starting to fall short in areas. A big issue that keeps getting over looked is the fact that design has changed and the mediums in which design projects are done has changed. Currently there is a much wider variety of design skills needed to succeed, like 2D/3D computer models, renderings, animations as well as hand models and hand renderings. Teachers are scrambling to keep up with the changing technologies. One year Pro-E is very valuable the next Solidworks seems to be the main CAD system. The same goes with 2D CAD systems Quark, Illustrator, Photoshop or maybe Indesign. Not to mention Rendering programs like 3D studiomax, Maya, Alias the list goes on. Design has to be at the top of technology and now design curriculums have to be jammed pack with skill sets in order for the students to be competitive. I agree with what this person is saying, but at to same time I don't agree with the fact that they didn't even consider the root problem and just blamed the teachers. I unfortunately don't have a solution, times are changing and what it means to be a designer is changing. Maybe students need more than 4 years.
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wellfellow

17 years ago

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Amen, Mr. Saffer.
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Robyn

17 years ago

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I'm so happy to finally see this observation in print -- it's exactly what I was thinking when I was in design grad school (at a school that will remain unnamed). It has taken a lot to overcome my "handicap", and I still don't think I've made up for what should've been a well-rounded, practical design education.
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Abe

17 years ago

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I wish the header mentioned what TYPE of design this article is about. Throwing together graphic, industrial, interior, fashion and what not only contributes to the problems raised by the article and the superficial image designers have. Hey Core - yes, headers ARE important in publishing.
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luke

17 years ago

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Preach it brother! Uh..ahem. Seriously, I fully agree with his thoughts, as design is an essentially useless profession when considerations of the practical are not given their deserved time - which in amount should most likely surpass the period spent in the initial, "dreamy" stage of design.
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Stiven

17 years ago

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Balance, in my experience I find that it's always about balance. Not enough design thinking and you will be relegated to be a CAD jockey or modelmaker or sketch freek. Too much design thinking will help you do well in the board room but you will hit a wall when you try to execute. Balance is key for designer to be the like the mythological "albatros" who can go in and out of many worlds and hold his own in all of them. Anything other than balance will eventually limit you.
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om suthar

17 years ago

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I am graduating from coventry university this year doing automotive design degree. Its a catch 22 for me, on one hand I feel the industry expects insane amounts of experience and knowledge to do the design job. On the other hand, the university takes on so many students, they care less once they have the money. I graduate and chances are I will vanish into oblivion quicker than finding a place for myself in the design industry. Despite my hard work, and passion, i find this ironic and sad.
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Joe

17 years ago

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"Details are also where we earn the respect of the developers, businesspeople, and manufacturers who make what we prototype real(er)."

As a traditionally educated designer, I have been asked to innovate in the emerging "design thinking" market with business builders and absolutely has credibility come from a specialized skill base, just as it does with the programmers, people managers, capital generators, marketers, and sales poeple you actually work with when you actually go into a company and do your "design thinking" work.

What do you think non-designers expect when they hire with designers to "think like designers"?

That said, I'm not dis-owning the trend. I'm all for it. Maybe it's just a question of vocabulary?

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STU

17 years ago

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i go to Art Center in Pasadena, CA. in addition to teaching you the How's of design, we also explore materialities and take a macro view of where things come from and were they may end up.

all our work is hands-on and we generate lots of work; we don't sit around and pontificate on theory.

truth!
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