Design's Growth

So, what is being done about developing qualified designers? One solution has been multidisciplinary product development courses that bring students and faculty together from industrial design, business, and mechanical engineering. The longest running of these are courses at Carnegie Mellon and a joint course between MIT and Rhode Island School of Design. Rather than attempt to explain the value of design to business students and business thinking to design students, the students work together for an entire semester jointly developing a business plan and a new product. At the end of the semester they hold a ‘design fair' where the teams present their finished products to faculty, students, and sometimes representatives from the venture capital world. IBM, Nike and Chrysler funded Corporate Design Foundation programs to help introduce these first courses but many more are needed today.

Two years ago, P&G began sponsoring School Collaboratives Program. Funding was provided to selected colleges and universities to conduct cross-functional projects among students from different disciplines, including design, marketing, engineering, finance, social anthropology and others. They worked on themes such as "Aging Consumers" and "Underserved Markets in the Developing World," while coaches from P&G helped to guide and critique the work.

If the US is to produce the number of skilled designers it needs, more companies must become more involved in design education. Siegel comments that we need to "Change secondary education to be more project based...make internships mandatory, two- or three-month stints in order to graduate. Start integrating design students into the business world early on. Tear down the barriers."

Says InSearch's Hirsch, "It is really a challenge of translating frames of reference between a designer's understanding of a problem and opportunity and a business person's understanding of the same problem and opportunity. This challenge must be better understood and taught in design education, beyond traditional design skills. Design education is woefully behind the curve of what it takes to succeed for a designer in current and fast evolving realities."

Can we develop enough designers with the right skills? I certainly hope that this will become a "good news" story.