How Design Educators Can Help Designers in the 21st Century

This video is directed to design educators, to the professors, instructors in schools of design or departments of design or even  in engineering or social science or visual arts departments where you're teaching design, maybe just a class, maybe a whole curriculum, maybe offering a degree, maybe not. So, this video is not for the students and

not for the existing professional practitioners, but rather for the faculty. Design is moving. There are new technologies, new ways of drawing, new ways of creating, new ways of visioning. We're using augmented reality;  we're using mixed reality; we're using virtual reality; we're using drawing tools; we're  using artificial intelligence tools that

you give them the constraints and say, "I need something about this big; it's going to be a table, and it has to be relatively lightweight, and it has to be very strong and hold 200 kilograms of weight and..." et cetera. And you just tell it what the  specs are, and the program produces the result. And you, as a designer, are defining the problem and interpreting the results and saying, "No. That's no good! Don't do any more like that!"

"Yeah. That's an interesting direction! Do more like that!" That's a new kind of design. It requires the skill of the designer, not the drawing skill but the skill to make judgments, the skill to reframe the problem, the skill to understand whether we're in the right direction or not. A powerful skill, but that requires *different training*. And also we're starting to look at *different things*. We're no longer designing just devices or just products

or just services. We're designing *systems*. And we're starting to look at *complex socio-technical systems*. How do we teach? How do we instruct people? Well, there are several different answers. First, Michael Meyer and I in our joint paper called "Designing for the 21st Century" said, "There's no single way that every school  should follow." "Each school is going to have to decide what its curriculum will be

based upon what its talents are, its resources are and what the interests of its students are." And so, what we want to do is have a platform for design curricula where every school can decide what they want to do. And some schools might be really happy with what they're doing now; some schools want to branch off; some schools want to make sure they prepare their students for the future – the 21st, for that matter, for the 22nd century.

So, how do we do that? What's required? Well, one of the things that's going to be required is learning how to work with other disciplines. In fact, some of the very, very best schools I've seen have done that. They work together. So, for example, the Royal College of Art in London has a joint program with the Imperial  College, an engineering school, which is just a few blocks away.

And the students do *both* – they  do the engineering and they do the art or, actually, design part. And so, the results they produce and  the training they get is fantastic because they are forced to understand the engineering and the technology *and* the design components, but also if they're trying to build something for,   say, actual use they're going to have to understand the economics and the actual manufacturing supply chain issues and materials issues.

Another example is – I've gone to many, many schools across the world and watched a lot of student presentations, but, of all of them, one of the most exciting ones I saw was I was visiting MIT and their Mechanical Engineering Department, which is where their design is located   because they do mostly engineering design. And as I was visiting them and spending the day with them, they said, "Hey, you know, we're going to have some  final presentations on a course that we teach

jointly with RISD, the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island, which was – I don't know – about 300 / 400 kilometers away. "So, you want to come and join us?" And I did, so I went down to Providence and we sat in and listened to students giving presentations. They were wonderful! And here's one of the reasons: RISD is a more traditional design school. It produces really good people – it's considered one of the better ones in the United States.

I think they would say in the world. MIT is an engineering school. It also has a business school. And so, they required this joint course that has been taught, actually, for a number of years. Every single project that was  done by the students had to have in it people from the Design School from RISD, people from MIT's Business School and people from MIT's Engineering School. And so, that combination of three people

or of three disciplines meant that every design was technically sound; every design was built with understanding of the people for whom it was done, and every design had the economics – the business model – already worked out. And so, when they gave their presentations, I thought, "Wow! Some of these could become products tomorrow." They had gone that far. They were so sophisticated in their analyses. Now, when I talked to the instructors, they pointed out this was not easy,

because these three different disciplines just didn't get along. They talk different languages. they don't understand each other. Sometimes they use the very  same words, but they have many different meanings. Business students always thought that they were going to come in and be in charge because, after all, they're going to business school to learn to be  the leaders of the company. And, no, that's not going to work. It has to be a *group effort* where everybody is *equal* and everybody is *working together*.

And it was very difficult to get this going. But once it got going, it was *extremely* effective. And people came to appreciate the  value that each of the other groups brought. The designers came to appreciate understanding  business, and the businesspeople appreciated the role of design, and the engineers appreciated both  those other two, which they normally don't think about. And so, you have to learn to work together  with other disciplines. So, the best thing is if you can devise courses where you bring together people.

If you are part of a large university, then work with the university. So, many design schools are in a big university, but they never go outside their own boundaries. They don't work together with  the other departments. And that is a real loss. Because in the world, you have to work together  with those other people. And if you're in a design school where you don't have those other disciplines, well, go find them out – they'll be local companies.

They will be other universities  or schools in your vicinity. Work with them. Form partnerships. It will turn out to be of interest and better for everyone. We have to change design education. And we have to change it by making it more exciting, making it more real, making it more realistic. The students love this. Usually, the faculty love it too. And you can still do whatever it is you wish to do. But we can use more modern techniques. And by bringing in the whole system, our results are much, much more effective.

In my own group at the University of California,  San Diego, we are doing work in many parts of the United States. But the simplest part is simply  within San Diego itself because within San Diego we can find the very rich and educated and the  very poor and homeless without a good education. We can find all sorts of people. We're also located on the border of Mexico with the city of Tijuana. And so, that brings us an international  flavor where we can start looking at

– first of all – there are really good software designers  and other design skills in Tijuana, Mexico. And – second – they have a very different outlook on  life than we do, and combining that with what we do is wonderful. It enriches everyone, and so we're working with other design schools in the city. We're working with the city itself, with the mayor,  with the Economic Development Corporation, with the area governments

to try to look at what the  major issues are inside of San Diego and how they can be addressed. And you can do the same. The people at the Royal College of Art in London told me they worked with the city to devise a scheme for new ambulances, new ways of taking care of injured and getting them to the hospital systems. There are lots of local problems that therefore allow you to express your abilities and work together with nontraditional groups like the city,

like the politicians, like economists,  like political scientists, like engineers, like businesspeople. That's how we change design. And you can do it all by yourself.