Useful skills designers can learn from others (What I am missing in Design School)

There are a few skills that are not taught in design school but that could be of great use to designers. I have listed down a few:

Data visualization
As we are learning that great design is based on extensive user research, we are going to need to learn how to visualize our results first. How else are we able to read our results and draw conclusions in order to inform our designs? What I am missing is a course on data visualization, the creation of proper and creative graphs, tables and other more innovative ways of visualizing and gathering data.

Interviewing

As social designers we are sent out into the field to do field research. A large part of that research is approaching users and interviewing them to gain insights. At design school we do receive teaching in making conversational tools and probes, but we are never fully schooled in what it takes to do a good interview and practice different interviewing techniques.

Writing

Designers are very visually focused and therefore might feel less confident in their writing abilities. Coming from a social science background I have received a decent education in academic writing, but I cannot say the same for my design school colleagues. However, when finishing a project and publishing about it in our portfolio or online, sooner or later designer will have to pick up a pen or computer and put their process into words.

Programming

Designers are very creative and analytical people. We are used to working with different kinds of software and spatial or processual thinking. I therefore believe that it could be a great addition to a designer’s skill-set to learn how to do basic coding and programming. Many prototypes could be taken to another level with a layer of coding or programming of for example moving parts or programmed interactions.

Disclaimer: This list will be updated over time.