Envisioning Futures of Design Education

Do you know how design should be taught in the future? Our recent paper in the journal Dialectic reports on a workshop we held with a group 6 design educators and 40 international participants to explore the future of design education.

To spark off the discussion, the 6 design educators presented 4 provocative future scenarios and posed the question: “What do future designers need to know and how do they need to learn to address the challenges presented in the scenarios?”

Six teams of 5-7 participants used a deck of cards (Roles, Skills, People, Places and Statement cards) with images and keywords or phrases to facilitate the participants’ discussions. Participants presented a poster of what their visions of the future of design education are. In our research, we looked at what images, words and phrases the participants did or didn’t use and were pleasantly surprised to find conjecture in some elements of the visions.

Collaboration was the most used Skill card and was included in five out of six of the visualizations. The importance of co-learning is highlighted by the fact that the most frequently chosen Statement card — Faculty and students of design are co-learners — was chosen by four of the six groups. The most frequently used Role cards were Learner, Inventor and Futurist, which were included in four out of six posters. The image of a smiling woman showing off fresh produce was the most frequently chosen People card and was used by five out of six groups. The most frequently chosen Place card was an illustration showing a child attempting to enter a painting of a natural environment and was used by five out of six groups. An analysis of these most frequently chosen cards reveals that, at least in the minds of the participants in this workshop, the future of design education will be built on collaboration and co-learning. Additionally, design education in the future will not neglect the study of and about how designers affect and are affected by the natural environment and will prepare design learners to act as futurists and inventors.

Do you agree?

Look at the posters and read more about the disagreements in the participant’s visions in our full paper.