Misunderstood and mysterious: how design and designers are perceived by design professionals, design educators and the public
Creators: name: Smith, Gillian
Publisher: name: Swinburne
Year: 2024

description: This study is focused on the field of design. It examines how people understand and perceive designers and the design professions. The study draws on a phenomenologically informed interactive perspective to provide a methodological approach to understanding what the perception of design is. The relationships between design and occupational prestige, professional status and consumerism are the principal themes that run throughout the research, but the analysis also draws on the data obtained to profile the demographics of designers, particularly in relation to income, gender and education. The research included an occupational prestige assessment, completed by 304 participants from Swinburne University and the University of the Third Age, using multidimensional scaling analysis to provide a mapping of the occupations. Overall, the results indicated that participants find it difficult to differentiate between individual design occupational specialties, but that they see design as distinct from proximate occupations such as artist and architect. The results also confirmed the premise that occupational prestige is multi-dimensional and that raters will use a variety of constructs (including service to the community, not just education and income), to determine their understanding of the perceived social standing of occupations. The findings were further explored within three focus group discussions involving both design and non-design students from Swinburne University. The results indicated that most participants, including the design students, knew relatively little about design and that what they did know was often skewed by media depictions and stereotypes. The final research stage was the development of a mail-out survey questionnaire that was distributed to design educators, members of the Design Institute of Australia and to a non-design, public group. Seven hundred and fifty three questionnaires were completed. As expected the results showed that there are differences between the level of knowledge and understanding of the three participant groups. The lack of knowledge of design and designers, particularly by the public participants, was quite evident, with the two design groups tending to rate design as more professional and of greater importance to society and the economy than the public group. Analyses of the incomes and occupational situations of the design respondents revealed that the designers generally worked in a unique environment characterised by low to middle incomes and very small organisations (except for those in the education sector). Gender differences between income and the positions held in an organisation were also found and would be a useful area for further investigation. The study was useful in that is served to clarify and quantify issues that have been raised in the literature about the poor understanding of design and designers. It provides a platform of information that could be further used in future studies to make more detailed examinations of specific issues.