design, designer and skills for the XXI century

Business schools are questioning what skills should be developed for the tomorrow’s company. Science and technology schools are wondering about the same. Design starts to escalate upwards in the organisational framework to a strategic level, and other countries (Canada, USA, China, Finland) are already integrating Design skills into their business schools.

The most important thing to understand is that the world is changing, in a very disruptive way, and that companies like Google (within only one decade) may have higher brand power at global scale than IBM, Xerox, or Tesco, which are well established businesses. Perhaps Google’s business model is an interesting case study for the task we have in hands, to help us identify the professional skills required in our new, fast-changing and ‘fluid’ marketplace.

 I believe the new designer skills are far beyond knowledge and keeping up to date with emerging technologies, since in today’s world, anyone can download software and ‘become a designer of things and messages’, across boundaries, serving clients of any scale, at a reasonable level of design quality standards (one can argue this, from a professional point of view, but most people seem to be quite happy with their poorly designed materials, self-home-made or produced by a talented colleague).

 So what are the skills for design in the future?

Design evolved from the past 3 core areas of design:

• Design of things (product/industrial design)
• Design of messages (graphic design)
• Design of spaces (interior design)

which were subdivided in 2 major ‘schools of thought’: engineering and arts, one focusing on the functional side of design and the other on the ‘looks and feels’ or aesthetics aspects of design.

In any case, the core values across the 3 sectors were clear and simple: form, function and functionality, and the core skills developed were focused in knowledge for manipulation of materials, colours, shapes linked with a technological background. All other areas - exhibition, packaging, textile, furniture, light, fashion, retail and so on were sub-categories of design. 

However over the last 20 years several new areas emerged, such as:

• Service design
• Interactions design
• Web design
• Experience design
• Design research
• Design futures
• Systems design
• Design Management
• Brand(business) design

These are not subcategories of the 3 core design schools, are new areas which didn’t exist 20 or 30 years ago.

Gradually Design became a problem solving activity, by nature user-centred.

 As the whole economy has also changed, and organisations are moving from well defined boundaries (i.e. I produce mobile phones, therefore I compete with other mobile phone manufacturer) to fluid and intangible brands (i.e. Nokia is ‘connecting people’, and competing with digital cameras, games, financial services, broadcast businesses) - and we can see a brand like Virgin that has no limits to it’s operation from trains to personal fitness, or Apple turning the whole industry of music upside down, or a telecom selling financial services, and Google now aiming to become a key player for the renewable energy market.

New agendas, such as sustainability, demographics, manufacturing and economic power shift towards Eastern industries, loss of local resilience, the new technologies, emerging rapid manufacturing, ‘shareability’, co-creation and innovation are having a major impact on the business and role of design for the economy.

As an example, Prof Dame Sandra Dawson presented at the Tomorrow Project Network, Sept 2008, the future business core skills:  

• 1. understand layers (human/social historical depth)
• 2. understand diversity
• 3. creating and sustaining relationships between people
• 4. understanding complexity (and the relationships between organisations, 3 sectors: private/public/charity)
• 5. co-creation
• 6. clarity on values and performance (leadership)

With this in mind, what skills are critical for the success of new designers?

This needs to be questioned together with the role of new designers in our new economies, which I am well aware of the issues and current fuzziness, far more complex than just the industry of Design, since we are going through a transition phase and this is affecting all sectors of our economy.

Do you have a view? Please share it, and send your comments.