A Designplus symposium
15 September 2010,
Brunel University
With 55,000 undergraduates currently studying design in the UK, and most of them likely to undertake a Final Design Project, how can an enterprising approach be integrated into this process?
With speakers from business, design, education and policy contexts, and hands-on workshop sessions, this event aimed to develop practical steps to more effectively connect the UK’s amazing young creative talent to the universal agenda of improving our economy and people’s lives through successful products, services and organisations.
The event was attended by Design tutors and Heads of Design from Higher Education, design bodies and policy makers, and design consultancy businesses with an interest in shaping future graduates.
left to right: David Worthington, David Riley and Stephen Green
Speakers
- Anne Boddington challenged design educators to behave entrepreneurially – like designers – and to do more to design a learning context where risk taking fits alongside a scholarly dialogue. She questioned whether learning outcomes are the best way to describe what is learned as well as what is produced, proposing that linear models of production are as outdated in education as they are in innovation.
- David Worthington delivered three warnings. Firstly, don’t worry about the design industry’s criticism that education creates too many graduates – this simply creates more choice for the industry. Secondly, don’t get caught up in the “Emperor’s New Clothes” of Enterprise and Entrepreneurship. This wasn’t to denigrate entrepreneurship as a quality – he maintained that designers are innately entrepreneurial in the sense that they imagine things which don’t exist today, and negotiate towards their existence. Thirdly, he implored design educators to keep it simple.
He also outlined the Design Alliance’s plans to maintain the UK Design Industry’s skills base, maintaining its position at the top of the global marketplace. These involve increasing numbers of schools with a Design Mark, suggesting links with local companies to support this plan. Also, implementing a visiting lecturer’s programme in Higher Education whereby lecturers themselves visit industry partners, following a structured development programme. Thirdly, the Design Alliance is creating an alliance of regional organisations, providing a space where, for example, a university could establish links with its local market.
- Gus Desbarats asked us as design educators to focus on preparing graduates for the realities of the workplace. His assertion that designers are continuously involved in entrepreneurial activity echoed David Worthington’s stance, and Gus highlighted that designers are, in their practice, investing other people’s money. To do this successfully, he argued, designers need to emerge from their education with empathy and the ability to turn this deep empathy into practical action, alongside risk awareness, persuasive negotiation skills, attention to detail, self- discipline and a sense of purpose.
He urged a move away from too much focus on objects, instead calling for attention to people’s interaction with the objects. Finally, a broadening of graduates’ understanding of their careers options – enabling them to think entrepreneurially and take up the opportunities available, both within applied design and beyond.
- David Riley also emphasised the need to better prepare the people who emerge from design education, offering some practical suggestions which, while they may or may not elicit more market-ready products from major projects, could produce more market-ready people. His suggestions to inject commercialism, entrepreneurship and market awareness into Major Projects included allocating a proportion of marks for market connections, feeling that, from an entrepreneurial point of view, allocating at least 50% of the marks to the market process wouldn’t be overstating its importance. Also, reinforcing Anne Boddington’s message, avoid penalising students for taking risks, as long as the student can evaluate the successful or otherwise outcome of this risk. Or perhaps injecting some market competition into marking – for example, apportioning 99% of a student’s marks to the normal criteria, and adding the remaining mark to a pool representing market competition which can then be competed for amongst the whole cohort. He felt that every department should have company sponsored prizes, perhaps with the company’s sponsorship input purely in kind, as expertise for example, in order to maintain these connections.
He urged universities to consider branching out, and to take the lead in such moves, rather than falling into “mackerel thinking”; waiting for the whole system to shift its direction.
left to right: Student Matthew Nourse, speakers Gus Desbarats and Anne Boddington
The four speakers sparked a lively debate, many of the ideas from which were fed into the later workshop session.
See speaker biographies
Six graduates from Brunel and Kingston Universities presented their insights on their own major project, having had time since graduating to reflect on the process. Their approaches were hugely varied, as were the aims of their projects, from Natalie King’s serendipitous nationwide publicity resulting in a potential commercial roll-out of her Tulipe flowerpot design to Michele Camerlengo’s ongoing development and strong ambition to go into production with his ObliqO urban vehicle.
Read draft student case studies
The afternoon workshop session produced a host of suggestions and ideas, including some themes such as:
- External contacts – nurture and expand industry links, invite external people to contribute to assessment, award schemes, live projects etc. Also, inviting new and past graduates to speak to students. Understanding and awareness of company structures, how designers can fit into this. Requirement for projects to have an external client. Contacts in non-traditional businesses.
- Cross-university, interdepartmental links. Students to be encouraged to take cross-disciplinary modules, other faculties to contribute to setting briefs. Encouraging multidisciplinary teams of academics.
- Reconsider marking criteria – e.g. acknowledge commercial marketing considerations. More flexibility, rewarding appropriate risk taking, less “tick-box” marking
- Support development of effective communication, persuasion and negotiation skills.
The debate continues at a LinkedIn group - Enhancing Enterprise in Design Major Projects