The Yin and Yang of Design Education :: Kim Goodwin

(This story was contributed by Kim Goodwin, who will be keynoting the 2016 Interaction Design Education Summit. Register now to be part of the the conversation!)

Many years ago, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who’s a professor of I/O psychology. To oversimplify, this is the academic discipline most closely aligned with the practice of human resources management. She was describing the unsympathetic — sometimes even hostile — relationship between the people who study and teach theory and the people who manage HR functions in industry. Naturally, this made me reflect on the industry/academia dynamic in interaction design. At the time, there wasn’t much of one, because there were so few academic programs.

Now, interaction design programs have begun to proliferate, but not just in traditional academic settings. We’re also seeing alternative programs with roots in industry and an emphasis on creating “industry-ready” designers. The implied (and sometimes overt) criticism is that higher education is failing to prepare graduates for doing design in a corporate setting, with its politics and deadlines and budget constraints. Yet there are concerns about the less-traditional programs, too; one academic faculty member described such a program to me as a “vocational school” that would turn out pairs of hands, not thoughtful designers.

Does this mean we’re following the divided path of other disciplines? Hopefully not; the design disciplines have always drawn faculty from among practitioners, which helps. The variety of perspectives represented in the program for the Summit is also another good sign. Clearly, the organizers have embraced a view of design education not as a one-time event of two or four years, but as an ongoing effort to shape the skills, philosophies, and practice of interaction design throughout someone’s career. Education happens through conferences, mentoring, and hands-on experience, too.

However, this doesn’t mean we’re making the most of what each learning environment is good at. If we treat each perspective (academia/industry) or learning environment (classroom/work) as complementary pair — contrasting but interdependent, like yin and yang — could we improve design education overall?

I look forward to exploring these and other questions with all of you in just a few weeks!