Design Education for Nondesigners. (2004)

Introduction Few high school students will be involved in design or technical education, but someday they may have to understand what design and the application of technology can do for them, either personally or professionally. The following a first look at how this may be accomplished. Over the last ten or so years, there have been many higher education attempts to create interdisciplinary courses of product design and development. The champion of establishing these programs has been and continues to be Peter Lawrence of the Corporate Design Foundation. This organization's mission as follows: It the mission of the Foundation to improve the quality of life and effectiveness of organizations through design. At the heart of this mission a desire to expand the awareness of design through the education of corporate leaders, managers, and public sector The mission of another equally important design-promotion organization, the Design Management Institute (DMI), is an education and research institute dedicated to demonstrating the strategic role of design in business and to improving the management and utilization of design. DMI assists managers, executives, consultants, and educators in their professional development through conferences, seminars, leading-edge publications, and a membership program. These organizations, along with others like the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), are getting the word out to enlighten executives about the value and processes used in design. These organizations have created an environment for using design by providing publications, workshops, seminars, and case studies that inform and instruct business leaders to the value of design. Additionally, many courses of study have been organized to teach product development at institutions like MIT and Rhode Island School of Design, Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University, and Delft University. All of these programs promote design as a means for new corporate innovation and most encourage alpha-prototype development. Some of these courses are interdisciplinary, drawing on students from business and engineering majors. Most, if not all, are offered by engineering faculty within engineering academic units, and a few are supplemented by faculty from Business and Industrial Design. Visually-based industrial design programs clearly do not lead the activities at these institutions. Numerous other seminars, workshops, and books have been developed and promoted to executives of the business community to help them become motivated to be more innovative within product-development processes, such as the Harvard Business Review series, in Cogan and Vogel's new book Creating Breakthrough Products, and the publication/workshop like ROI from Bill Dresselhaus. These publications and events add value to the understanding of design and its usefulness when considering possible tools and methods to inspire innovation within a corporation. These materials are also appropriate for use in business classes and are good reading for corporate executives. I question if this material fully understood by the nondesign reader and if, contextually, it can be applied in managerial settings using fully integrated industrial design. Taking into consideration all of the communication efforts and literature to promote industrial design within the corporate product community, there are several aspects that may have been overlooked by these efforts and/or organizations. 1. Few, if any, incorporate traditional studio practices used for years by industrial design educators. 2. Very few of these educational venues or books offer any projects that teach the act of designing (e.g., creating product artifacts), and very few offer simple methods for drawings or diagramming, and techniques for studio discussion and/or critique. 3. Few clearly state rationale for the designer being involved in the entire product design cycle--overcoming the typical scenario of being brought in during a segment of the process to add visual acuity to the project. …