Deep or Wide : Between Education and the Design Profession
I tend to argue with myself. It usually ends peaceably unless it’s out loud on public transportation. As these last days of summer fade into the school year, I find I am at odds with myself once again.
Educators serve two masters: to the student and the profession. With limited time and budget, teachers struggle with the choice: teach the person, or train employees. In schools of industrial design, this issue is particularly relevant. The field has become so broad that schools struggle to provide enough depth. The technical burden of the software alone could fill a four-year course of study. Factors like technology and globalization are changing the role of designer at a break neck pace. Where design historically concerned itself with manufactured things, today’s designers are routinely employed to also develop strategies, interactions, and experiences. Are design programs teaching enough of the skills that designers really need, or are we simply training the designers of tomorrow in the techniques of today?
I teach design part time at an art college. Working with the students for a semester is a short time, and we relate within mainly the confines of the syllabus. It is difficult to know with certainty that everyone in the classroom completed the assignment, let alone learned the actual lesson. Are they prepared to enter the profession, adding value to the process, or will the student be part of the cost undertow of on-the-job training? And what about the transportation design graduates who don’t get jobs in the field? Is their education wasted? I think about this because I believe it my duty to help the student develop as a whole-precisely because of the uncertainty of the profession.
Design is about order. It is a plan-a strategy. Leveraged by manufacturers’ costs, marketers’ sell, and consumers’ souls, design negotiates constraints into useful and beautifully ordered forms. For my students, I use the designer-as-a-lens metaphor. The many constraints and needs on one side need to be focused into a beautiful solution on the other side. It is said that good constraints drive good design, and that’s because good design cannot be realized with unclear goals.
Skills are a means of communication. A hand drawn sketch conveys the designer’s intent. Is consulting a materials engineer any different? The expert is an asset to be leveraged just as a pencil is an asset to facilitate communication. Verbal, written and visual communication are the most important skills a designer can have. You can have the best, most researched idea, but if you cannot communicate it, explain it, or sell it-what good is it?
The necessary skill set involved in this role of general practitioner is different from that of the one-man show. To specialize is to maintain a tight focus. Precise focus limits vision. Specific study constrains creativity by nature. The generalist must constantly change hats through different phases of the development cycle. As the project gets passed from expert to expert, the designer maintains the duty of user proxy. The ability to navigate this environment necessitates a broad exposure to information, media and methodology.
I also work for a design consultancy, and it is part of my job to find the “talent.” A good team is critical to success. Sometimes it’s easy-we don’t stay up so late and the client is pleased. Sometimes it takes more work.
Consultancies seek technical skill sets that can add value to the team and produce billable hours of work. There is very little tolerance for a learning curve or education on the company dime. It is myopic, but that’s business. Training people costs a lot, and by the time you get new hires to be productive, they usually leave to get a better job. Internships are critical to this exposure. More and more programs are enforcing mandatory internships for their students. Students coming out of the University of Cincinnati have already been exposed to half a dozen professional design environments. Through those co-op experiences, the graduate emerges with real world insights into professional expectations.
It seems I am a hypocrite. I convey to my student the need to be broad and focused outward on the world, yet I won’t hire anyone who can’t model an organic form in Rhino or render chrome in Photoshop. To be competitive in the world today, the designer can’t afford to be weak at anything. Schools can only do so much. Each design program establishes its own place in the continuum. Different schools are known for their different philosophies-theory, research, form, etcetera. Professors impart their own unique interpretations. Schools set the stage, but it’s the students’ responsibility to earn their education through dedicated practice. And that education continues through their professional lives. Maybe designers should be less like doctors and more like the Marines, “Adapt and overcome.” And I continue argue with myself.