The role of the designer is changing.
Designers are creating new roles for themselves, in response to new questions society and industry are facing. Designers are being taken more seriously by the tech industry than ever before; twenty seven startups that were co-founded by designers have been acquired since 2010 by companies like Google, Facebook, Adobe, Linkedin, Dropbox and Yahoo. Design is becoming more and more commonplace on the curriculum of world leading business schools such as Stanford, Harvard and Yale. Most importantly, the development of experiences and services is at the core of these changes and design thinking is often the method used to build solutions.
And yet, at the height of our demand the quality of our supply is challenged. Jonny Ive famously said that design education is "tragic." How can we turn this around?
Our workshop will dig into this issue, exploring the experiences of participants by asking key questions about their work and their learning. Grappling with questions that matter such as:
• How do you teach systems thinking?
• What does the designer as unicorn trend mean for education?
• Why are tech companies acquiring design agencies? How are we teaching future designers how to collaborate with engineers in light of this?
• What are you learning and how are you learning it?
• How can educators partner with industry to better prepare students for the workplace?
This will be a hands on workshop prototyping alternative futures for both design education and creative industries. Lauren and Daniel invite you to join them in tackling our communities biggest design challenge yet: how do we design designers?
