PART II: EPISODE ONE
The things they don’t teach you in (design/art) school
Design practitioners reflect on the value of formal education
Following on from my original article on the importance of formal (design) education, I am now jumping off to the more practical side of my exploration, namely the absolutely fascinating conversations that I had with 13 design practitioners. Picking their brains about the value of academic training, the relationship between academia and industry, what it means to be a good designer and how to make the leap from being an inexperienced student to becoming an accomplished professional, these discussions gave me a lot of insightful knowledge and refreshed my outlook on the value of my own education, as I was going into the design industry.
In the first episode of these interview series, I am sharing my conversations with Marc Fonteijn and Sebastian Gier. In professional terms, Marc is a service designer, based in the Netherlands; founder and host of the Service Design Show; co-founder of the first service design agency in the Netherlands ⏤ 31Volts and co-founder of the Service Design Job Board.
Sebastian is a very versatile user experience and strategic designer, based in Germany; founder and host of Designdrives, a podcast about the evolution of the design industry and how it moves society forward. He is also Senior Designer at BMW Group.
I encourage you to tune in to Marc’s conversation with Natalia Agudelo, former design lecturer, currently service designer, where they discuss education, imposter syndrome, personal growth and vulnerability. In this episode of Designdrives, Sebastian talks to Hector Silva, Research Associate Professor at the University of Notre Dame and founder of Advanced Design, about the future of (industrial) design education and revolutionising the way we approach teaching. Both Marc and Sebastian are making major contributions to the design community and I personally have benefited tremendously from their work.
Here are their thoughts on the value of education*. Happy reading!
*these interviews are being published with the prior knowledge and consent of the authors.
Marc, you graduated from an engineering programme at the University of Applied Sciences in Utrecht and then you went into service design. Why did you decide to change direction?
M: It was by accident I would almost say. For me it was the feeling that I got tired of solving problems, that weren’t the actual problems, at least it felt that way. I didn’t know at the time that design was the thing that it is today so I was just looking for a better approach which I felt had a better way of solving challenges for people, and at that time I didn’t know it was called design. I was just looking for an alternative.
The first time I heard about service design, it made a lot of sense to think about services from a design perspective, the major part of our economy is made out of services and it seemed that nobody was approaching services from that perspective. It seemed like there was a lot of potential to explore this but it wasn’t anything that was already established, it was more like exploring in a new lab.
What is your take on education? Do you think that a person needs it in order to become a good professional?
M: It depends on the kind of education, I know good schools and I know bad schools; I know good students and I know bad students but you don’t need a degree in order to be a good designer.
What in your opinion, makes someone a good designer then?
M: That’s a big question, we can spend another three hours talking about that. For me it is curiosity, confidence, humbleness, eagerness, a positive mindset, optimistic mindset, those would be the first things that I would mention.
Design seems to be spreading far and wide in recent years, a lot of people are switching fields and becoming designers, a lot of businesses are embracing design, at least theoretically. What, do you think, is driving this collective interest for design?
M: Almost everyone has some design skills and attitude and mindset that doesn’t per se make them trained or skilled designers who can deliberately create a specific outcome. People are starting to recognise that there’s something that they’ve always been doing, they see that the existing ways of working, aren’t always the most effective ways to solve challenges.
I think the challenges are changing and that’s why people are looking for a different approach. Design seems to be one of the approaches that fits the challenges we face today better than our old approaches.
I see, this makes sense. If you think about your education, what was something important that you took out of it, in terms of skills or memories, if you will?
M: I think a lot of people underestimate how much overlap there is between, for instance the engineering and the design field. I know people who’ve studied economics and go into design, so there’s often a lot of overlap. For me, there was a lot of visual thinking in my formal practice, that was something that I could easily borrow and use, there was a lot of structured problem solving in my education, I was just using a different design material, my design material were 1s and 0s, while if you’re a graphic designer, you use a paint and a brush, if you’re an architect, you use bricks and water ⏤ so structured problem solving, visual thinking; those were the things that I could easily transfer into the service design field.
How about the things you didn’t learn at school but you learned because of your design practice?
M: Those are really practical skills: knowing how to interview, knowing how to create videos that tell a story, knowing how to visually present work so that it engages with people, more hands-on practical skills. But there are also soft skills, like how to show empathy for people, how to communicate with people in a way that respects them and also gets them moving forward; my work is a lot about communication, a lot of skills in that area.
How big a role do you think that talent plays in the design field?
M: What do you mean?
I’m thinking about art schools, for example. I’m generalising but students in art schools tend to have this mindset that they are exclusive, they are talented and creative. I’m wondering whether it takes 80% talent and 20% hard work to become a good design practitioner or it’s rather the other way around.
M: It’s different in different design disciplines; in our work, service design, talent is less important. I think attitude and mindset and approach is more important.
I have always felt like academic training is kind of divorced from the industry, and they are two completely different worlds. What is your vision about this, Sebastian? Would you say that formal education lags behind industry?
S: It depends. I think there are two sides to it: I think the universities should be thinking beyond the current state of the design disciplines and educate young talents for aspects that are relevant for the future. They should think about what’s the next wave of design and where things are going ⏤ but also where design can bring value not just to businesses but also society at large. I think they are very well positioned to have these thoughts around the discipline from a more zoomed-out perspective. They can run experiments and try concepts that can surface important aspects for society and even fuel ethical discussions ⏤ while on an industry level there is sometimes not even the space for such fresh and provocative thinking. But sometimes it feels like they run behind while on the flip side there are some universities and programs that are even more progressive than the industry. I can see examples in the full spectrum.
It’s hard to make a generic case here but generally speaking I think universities should be right at the next step of the design discipline. At the same time, maybe it’s due to the speed of the current industry, if you look at aspects like voice interactions or augmented reality interactions; these are becoming really big but there is no program out there that really offers that. Maybe that’s a very technological view of what the future should be and what should be taught and I don’t believe programs should be defined purely by technological innovations or business needs but it should play at least a certain role in the education.
I don’t know if you can make the case that in general design university education is behind because in some cases I can see them being ahead. On my Designdrives.org podcast I had the Programme Director of the first “bio design” programme in the world ⏤ Nancy Diniz at Central Saint Martins in London as a guest. They explore the intersection of biology and design.
There’s a lot of biology innovation but it isn’t accessible for the broader society because there is a lack of transfer into products, applications, processes and solutions so we need design in order to make that link between human needs or experience and science ⏤ and ultimately to drive sustainable innovation.
The program from it’s position and setup really looks at the future, at what you can do through new approaches and experiments. In some areas, education might be behind but in some areas, there are very progressive examples.
Yes, I guess for every person it’s different, nobody can make general statements about (design) education, because nobody has experienced all education programmes in the world.
S: Yes, I think there are good examples and bad examples.
The general value of formal education is another aspect, it really depends on where you want to go, if you want to go into research or academia, I think there is a lot of need for theoretical knowledge of design and it makes a lot of sense but if you want to go into an area like UX where, let’s say there is less demand for these skills because there is so much general market demand, then it rather boils down to more practical and technical skills ⏤ and with the current state of online education it has become easier for people to gain these capacities with a combination of online guidance and hours of work put into the craft.
The growing level of online education is a threat to universities moving forward, I totally believe that, except for the ones that have a strong brand and recognition. You can make the case that these days you don’t need a design degree in order to land a job in many design fields, you don’t need that at all. It depends on what you want to do, design is so big, again, it’s hard to make a generic case. If you want to go into education, academia and research, it might be really hard without a degree because you need theoretical knowledge.
One thing I miss when I review portfolios and candidates for internships, for instance, is a more proper education around design. Especially within my degrees I had the chance to get insights around photography, design history, industrial design, color theories, typography or communication design and I feel like these made me a more “complete designer”. With some of the young talents who purely learn a few months online program I feel this is missing and the skills are very one-dimensional and a broader view on design is missing ⏤ which might be okay depending on what you want to do.
Even in an area like UX there are certain roles and aspects which require a more sophisticated education background. Aspects like cognitive science and psychology might be relevant if it is more research oriented UX work. You also need hours, it’s all about the hours. If you sign up for university, it gives you basically nothing as long as you don’t put the hours in, so it’s just a framework, just an infrastructure.
Talent is of course real but I don’t think it’s so much about being talented because if you put in enough hours, you could surpass a certain level of talent. But it is also key to have passion for the work you put in. If you are not self-driven, you will not get anywhere.
Network, that’s something I’ve learned is absolutely key, but I think this goes for any kind of industry. I think maybe design is a little bit more fair in a sense because things are a little bit more transparent through visible work but generally speaking, it’s a lot about the network.
I have a lot of friends who are the most amazing designers I know who struggle to find a job because they don’t have any connections. And then I have friends who maybe are not that talented and didn’t put that many hours but they have so many connections and get a job really easily.
That’s something I see you could argue is not so fair, maybe it’s even more unfair outside of design; especially in the more practical examples of design, you can look at the portfolio, you can get at least a tendency of who is the better pick, at least on the more technical side of design, I think it’s much harder outside of the design space.
I agree. The way you present yourself can have so much bearing on potential success or failure. If you look back on your education, what did you take out of it in terms of skills or qualities that were valuable for you moving forward?
S: I think number one is people. I went for Umeå Institute of design, I’ve always wanted to go there for my master or at least for a semester because they are ranked four times in a row as the best design school. They have a really good recognition and so they have a lot of applications and I was really happy to get in ⏤ but it was all about the people I met there. It’s in the north of Sweden and if you go there you sign up for an excellent but intense program because it is so competitive and people are so eager to become good in their field.
So everyone comes in with that mentality of growing themselves. Being a bit disconnected up in the north of Sweden and meeting these people who have the same drive like you forms an incredible community. I met so many friends there and people who became relevant industry connections later on. At the same time, it’s very competitive and in the projects you pick up new design skills by learning from talents and things people bring into the projects from different backgrounds.
If you are surrounded with people who are better than you, then you need to stretch yourself and I think that’s the way you learn, just being close to people who do better in certain areas. So what I got out of university were the connections ⏤ it was more the environment and getting into a room with these other people and the collective learning.
I couldn’t be more thankful for the time and the great platform it provides. Also the teacher makes a difference, in my case Thomas Degn who supported me and makes up this whole setup and environment for people to grow. And then definitely, the school provided me with project opportunities and potential case studies. These projects lead to a portfolio so you get work examples and projects you can show later on.
Obviously, that’s why you do projects at the university, you can do these projects also outside of the university; you can build up a portfolio just by doing projects by yourself or find a company where you’re going to work for free and just do your project with them. It’s the same thing basically, the only thing with a university, you have a community and you have a given framework, otherwise you will just be on your own. But you can still do it. Basically, you put in some work so that later on you can show people what kind of value you can provide to them. So you get some projects to make yourself measurable or so you can communicate your value of having you on in an organisation.
You’ve done a number of internships with some very well-known companies. How was that experience compared to the reality at university?
S: An internship moves you towards an actual job. I think I learned more in an internship than in my first semesters of university. Well, at least it is a different aspect of design that is not possible to gain in university, practical design experience. I think it is important to have that balance of theory and practical knowledge when studying at a university. I would always recommend to get as much internship and work experience while being enrolled in a university because its a crucial element of learning. Staying at university for years without gaining practical experience is something I really can’t recommend.
If you think about your experience on the job, what did you take from it in terms of skills that shaped you as a designer, or as an individual, which university couldn’t deliver?
S: In the job you continue to grow your hard skills and then it becomes more and more about soft skills, as well. I think I’ve grown my soft skills quite a bit being in the job. In an internship and maybe being in junior positions and studying, I was much more focusing on the hard skills, like being better at design. While I still grow on that, now I have a lot of design management aspects to handle and then you don’t grow your hard skills so fast. I am very conscious about that and try to balance this out and stay creative with time blocked for designing.
In addition, you grow a lot of vertical knowledge when designing for a while in a certain in-house design study, in my case automotive and mobility. That’s the difference to a consultancy and agency where you tap into new areas of design every few weeks. But since I gained some agency experience before, I actually like the fact to go vertical and learn more expert knowledge in a certain field.
Furthermore, you learn how to run projects, how to set up a design process, what designers you need for which problem, how to run and manage larger programs, mentor other designers or interns and how to structure professional projects, how to collaborate with certain experts like engineers or business stakeholders. These topics are very different to any university or an internship experience but it all goes step by step. All previous learnings enabled me for these new learnings.
I’m curious, if you didn’t go for design, if you didn’t study design, what would have been your second best choice?
S: I was actually looking also at engineering but for me it was just missing the creativity. So I said “Ok, maybe I’ll go a bit more into creative but have some pieces of engineering also”, which is actually the reality in design through collaboration with technical partners. I also like the fact that design can overlap with business aspects and I enjoy that collaboration, too. Also, I would be interested to study architecture. Architecture would be interesting but I think design was the best decision I could have made, looking backwards, but I think architects can drive a lot of impact in the world. What they are doing, is more lasting, since the building is not designed for a year or few years like digital products or certain physical ones. If you have to design a complete new part of the city, you drive a lot of things, like landscape architecture or architecture of cities. It’s very lasting, that’s what I like about it, you do it and it’s going to stay. I am happy with design and it was probably the best decision in my life to go that path but I think like everyone else, I evolve and I also see new topics like product management and even marketing where I can see aspects that I would like to learn further and incorporate in my work which I am already trying to do.
Key take-aways
Practical skills and knowledge is something you usually get on the job while university is best for making connections and being surrounded by people whom you can learn from and grow alongside.
We shouldn’t isolate design from other areas of expertise, even the ones that seem a complete opposite to design. There is usually a lot of congruence between design and other disciplines, and design can make a great impact on other fields of study.
Education should focus on how to move society forward and bring value to the society at large.
Formal education provides structure and a holistic view on the design profession, which ultimately makes you a more well-rounded designer.
You need to be proactive ⏤ you cannot fall back on your university enrollment and stop there, growing as a designer is an iterative process which takes commitment.
