%% apa:: Meyer, M. W., & Norman, D. (2020). Changing Design Education for the 21st Century. _She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation_, _6_(1), 13–49. [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2019.12.002](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2019.12.002) %% # Changing Design Education for the 21st Century --- Meyer, M. W., & Norman, D. (2020). Changing Design Education for the 21st Century. _She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation_, _6_(1), 13–49. [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2019.12.002](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2019.12.002) ^apa --- ## Metadata title: Changing Design Education for the 21st Century author:: Michael W. Meyer, [[Don Norman]] cite-key:: meyer2020ChangingDesignEducation date_published:: 2020-03-01 url:: [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405872620300046](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405872620300046) doi:: [10.1016/j.sheji.2019.12.002](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2019.12.002) Type: Journal article keywords:: [[Design education]] --- ## Abstract Designers are entrusted with increasingly complex and impactful challenges. However, the current system of design education does not always prepare students for these challenges. When we examine what and how our system teaches young designers, we discover that the most valuable elements of the designer’s perspective and process are seldom taught. Instead, some designers grow beyond their education through their experience working in industry, essentially learning by accident. Many design programs still maintain an insular perspective and an inefficient mechanism of tacit knowledge transfer. Meanwhile, skills for developing creative solutions to complex problems are increasingly essential. Organizations are starting to recognize that designers bring something special to this type of work, a rational belief based upon numerous studies that link commercial success to a design-driven approach. So, what are we to do? Other learned professions such as medicine, law, and business provide excellent advice and guidance embedded within their own histories of professionalization. In this article, we borrow from their experiences to recommend a course of action for design. It will not be easy: it will require a study group to make recommendations for a roster of design and educational practices that schools can use to build a curriculum that matches their goals and abilities. And then it will require a conscious effort to bootstrap the design profession toward both a robust practitioner community and an effective professoriate, capable together of fully realizing the value of design in the 21st century. In this article, we lay out that path. ^abstract --- ## Annotated Bibliography The authors propose that design education has not kept pace with what the world needs designers for, and that design education must adapt as current approaches do not suit the complexity of designers. They identify Ken Friedman’s Eleven Design Challenges from 2019 (subdivided into four cumulative groupings: Performance, Systemic, Contextual, Global) as the focus for human-centred design practice going forward, and the basis for their educational reforms. Both authors come from non-design educational backgrounds, but have had strong careers in design, and suggest that design education can not be taught in a vacuum, but instead would benefit from a robust liberal arts education, or for graduate schools to emphasize diverse non-design backgrounds in incoming students. They take a long view at (self-identified) European- and American-centric design education history, and compare it against other disciplines that carry a strong societal weight (medicine, business, law). Norman and Meyer identify a perception challenge with design education: Design is often integrated into the Faculty of Art (BA, MA), which both causes a disservice to design education (design has expanded beyond the art heritage) and to designers (as design is not recognized as a distinct or rigourous academic discipline, how do we mature design in both business practice and graduate academic standings?) --- ## Notes - ### Jumping points - [[Knowledge, tacit]] - [[Treating the symptoms, not the cause]]