The Future of Design Education

The Future of Design Education

Terry Winograd

For the past couple of years I’ve been part of an exciting venture in design education in a called the Hasso Plattner Institute for Design at Stanford (known as the “d.school”). In the spirit of design through iterative prototyping, we still don’t know what it will ultimately be. There aren’t specific plans yet for a degree program, a curriculum structure, or a formal charter. Instead, we are creating and testing a series of courses, related in spirit but each different in detail, to create experiences for students in which they will learn to do innovative design.

Our approach is based on decades of experience in Stanford’s Product Design program, an interdisciplinary program founded in 1958 by Robert McKim. The Stanford Magazine (March-April 2002) described McKim as “an industrial designer rebelling against the “styling illness” he saw as common in his field. He wanted his students to go deep, to think about aesthetics, technology, users and economics.. .. trying to create little Leonardo da Vincis, people who were skilled in many things and diverse enough to create a whole product.”

Many graduates of the program have become leaders in the design field, and the program maintains close connections, among others, to IDEO, which was founded by graduates of the program and has provided many of its instructors over the years. (see the books by Tom Kelley and Jonathan Littman, The Art of Innovation and The Ten Faces of Innovation).

From our experience we know that innovative design doesn’t require being a Leonardo da Vinci. Through creating the right learning experiences and giving students confidence in a way of approaching design problems, they will do the thinking that leads to good design. Good design includes aesthetics and usability and a larger sense of people’s needs and experience. Our goal is to make all our students creative practitioners of good design—to enable them to innovate routinely.

What?

The word “design” is dangerous. For many people, it brings to mind the world of skilled artists who create objects of beauty, and often luxury, as in a “designer dress.” This is McKim’s “styling illness.” Our view is closer to the one articulated by Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon, a founder of Computer Science:

”...Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. … Design, so construed, is the core of all professional training… Schools of engineering, as well as schools of architecture, business, education, law, and medicine, are all centrally concerned with the process of design.” -- The Sciences of the Artificial, (1969)

Design education that covers this breadth is a tall order, and there have been decades (if not centuries) of discourse on how best to achieve it. Simon argued for a highly rationalized approach, close to his work in the creation of the field of Artificial Intelligence. Our approach is centered instead on a particular notion of what we call “Design Thinking” which brings knowing and doing together. Design thinking is learned in experiences ranging from one-hour quick-design exercises (e.g. designing a new wallet for the needs of a fellow student) to year-long projects based on field studies in India that lead to a new product for solar lighting.

How?

Our approach to design education starts with the metaphor of developing “T-shaped” competence in each student.

The vertical stem of the “T” is a deep mastery of a relevant discipline. This can include both the analytic disciplines (in our case, engineering, business, computing, management, medicine, or education) and the ones traditionally taught at design schools, such as graphic design, industrial design, and architecture. These are learned through immersion, in the classroom, the laboratory, and the design studio.

The horizontal top of the “T” is the integrative understanding that allows a designer to incorporate deep knowledge and skills into a way of evolving designs through doing. Design is ultimately about doing. This cannot be developed by adding classroom and studio time, even in multiple disciplines. It grows out of experience in exercising understanding in real-world settings.

Learning by engagement with people and their world

The academic setting normally lends itself to learning through exercises – activities that a student or team can complete them in a term or less, generally in the confines of the classroom, laboratory, or studio. We look to larger projects – still in the reach of the students in a course, but with the potential to be developed further to bring innovations into practice. Projects are often the result of a collaboration with organizations such as IDE (International Development Enterprises), a nonprofit group founded by Paul Polak to increase agricultural output in the worlds poorest countries, as well as companies such as SAP, Fidelity and Walmart.

Learning through prototyping

The key to tackling large projects while starting small is a belief in the power of prototyping – of putting quick partial implementations into the world to learn from experience. David Kelley, founder of the program, is often cited for his statement that "enlightened trial and error outperforms the planning of flawless intellects." In one exercise, students were given a week to go out and have a real impact on bicycle safety on campus. Ideas ranged from a mock accident for raising awareness to a makeshift roundabout (which was a prototype for one that has since been installed by the university). At every stage the goal is to think, then act, then reflect and do it again.

Design for user needs and experience

If the goal of design is to “change situations to preferred ones,” then it must begin with understanding of the situation and of people’s experience. In the course on “Design for Extreme Affordability,” students went to India and Myanmar to understand the context of the people who would be using their designs. In our course on design tools, students went out into hardware and software design companies, museums, and other design environments. We emphasize both getting information from the experts who “know the territory” and on observing with a new perspective.

Collaboration across multiple perspectives and expertise

You can’t tackle a real project with the knowledge that comes from only one discipline. In every course we involve multiple perspectives from design, technology, and from people in business and management who wouldn’t normally be associated with traditional design courses. Teaching teams, student project teams, and every working group all have a mix, to ensure that we’re getting multiple perspectives. This means a kind of mutual respect that differs from the “rock star designer” culture, looking to the power of multi-perspective groups to do better design than any individuals. We even have a “d.shrink” to help with our ongoing conscious reflection on the design processes.

The results have been both satisfying and challenging. Students so far have developed dozens of creative design concepts and prototypes, some of which are now being moved further into application. We think of it as an incubator design skills rather than for companies, but we’re beginning to see that the course ideas have a life beyond the end of the term. One of the key challenges we face is how to best fit the project-based design concept into the academic structure, so that momentum can be maintained for those difficult next steps once the first surge of effort is done.

Who?

Our students come from many departments including engineering, business, social sciences, medicine, and more. Each finds that his or her area of expertise can be the crucial element to making some project work and develops a confidence in bringing a valuable perspective to a team effort. Many of them do not see themselves as “design students” but will become de facto “design leaders” in their future environments in industry, education, and other walks of life. This past summer 30 PhD students from 18 different departments as diverse as Aeronautics, Computer Science, Developmental Biology, Political Science, and Spanish took time out of their highly specialized academic research for a weeklong experience in design. They characterized it as the best experience they had at the university – one that will be of lasting value when they return to their labs and scholarship.

Along with this broad constituency, we also want to build a new generation of design leaders, with expert skills in design thinking. They will be design teachers, coaches, and researchers who can grow the role of design thinking in academia and in industry.

Where?

The Stanford d.school is only one of the places developing new programs for design thinking. They include design schools, such as The Institute of Design at IIT and the , new media schools such as The School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University, business schools, such as the Rotman School of Management in Toronto, and interdisciplinary programs in design with engineering and computing, such as those at Carnegie Mellon University and the Technical University of Eindhoven in The Netherlands. Each program has its own perspectives and strengths, but all are part of a building community that shares the common core of values about user-centered experience-driven design thinking.

Why?

So what is the future of design education? If every engineer, doctor, lawyer, and businessperson designs, as Simon argues, then they can all learn to be designers – to have the experience and tools for innovating be the norm. There are many great places that already do design education for the “stem of the T.” They, along with engineering schools, business schools, information schools and others will provide new opportunities for students to learn design thinking that bridges the top – thinking that gives them new insights and new approaches to “creating preferred situations.”.