Chatterjee

Global
Lecture
Ullman School of
Design

October 3, 2019
College of Design,
Architecture, Art &
Planning

University of Cincinnati
Ken Friedman
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies
College of Design and Innovation
Tongji University
Shanghai

Eminent Scholar
Ullman School of Design, DAAP
University of Cincinnati
Cincinnati, Ohio

4
Design
Education
Today
Challenges,
Opportunities,
Failures
“My guesses are
much, much better
than yours.”

Robert Jastrow
(Quoted in Nichols 2017: 82-83)

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To Design is to devise
“courses of action
aimed at changing
existing situations
into preferred ones.”
Herbert Simon

(1982: 129)

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To understand the
kinds of situations we
might prefer, we
must understand the
world we inhabit
now.

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The Context
of Design

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Seven
World
Economies

(Friedman 2005)

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Economy 1

Gathering and
harvesting

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Economy 2

Fabricating

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Economy 3

Transport and
utilities

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Economy 4

Commerce and
capital services

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Economy 5

Information and
knowledge services

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Economy 6

Emotional work,
human networks,
experience economy,
cultural services

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Economy 7

Work on biological,
molecular, and atomic
structures through
nanotechnology and
biotechnology

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In the past, material
was often the most
valuable factor in
many economies.

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In today’s economy,
human activity adds
greater value to
products and services
than material inputs
add.

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This trend increases
with the growth of an
economy often
comprised of
intangible assets.
(Haskel and Westlake 2018: 15-35.)

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Old economies and
new are always
interwoven.

The proportions
change over time.

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This leads to
challenges that affect
all organizations
that provide products
or services.

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This includes
business and industry,
the government,
public services,
the military …

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… and the educational
organizations that
prepare people to
work in them.

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"The future is already
here.

It's just not evenly

distributed."
William Gibson

(2003)

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In the context of
the seven world
economies, designers
face eleven major
challenges.

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Design education
must face these
challenges and the
opportunities
they represent.

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Eleven
Challenges
for
Design

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Three
performance
challenges

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Design acts on the
physical world and on
the linked world of
intangibles.

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Design addresses
human needs and
desires.

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Design generates the
built environment
– tangible and
intangible – as well as
the social
environment.

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Four
systemic
challenges

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We live in a world
marked by ambiguous
boundaries between
artifacts, structures,
systems, and
processes.

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We work in a world of
large-scale social,
economic, and
industrial frames.

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We design for a
complex environment
of ever-shifting
needs, requirements,
and constraints.

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We design for a world
in which intangible
content often exceeds
the value of physical
substance.

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Three
contextual
challenges

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The projects, products,
and services we design
often cross the
boundaries of
organizations,
stakeholder, producer,
and user groups.

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These projects,
products, and services
must meet the
expectations of many
organizations,
stakeholders,
producers, and users.

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These projects,
products, and services
must meet demands at
every level of
production, distribution,
reception, and control.

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The
Global
Challenge

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We face a world in which
we must help to design
solutions for the
problems of complex
sociotechnical systems
in a threatened
planetary environment.

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(see Friedman 2012: 148-150; Meyer and
Norman 2020 [in press]; See also: United
Nations 2015 The 2030 Agenda for
Sustainable Development.)

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These challenges
create a new context
for the design
process.

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Some forms of design
remain similar to what
they have long been.

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Other forms of design
emerge in response to
new developments,
new tools, new
situations, and new
technologies.

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Buchanan’s model of
the four orders of
design fit the current
context of seven
economies and eleven
challenges.
(Buchanan 2001: 12)

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The four orders
involve symbols,
things, action, and
thought.

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These relate to
graphic design,
industrial design,
interaction design,
and environmental
design.

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When Buchanan first
proposed the four
orders, the intangible
environment was a
relatively new
concept.

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Today, we can see
that all four orders
function together in
differing ratios.

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Together, these
factors define the
kinds of education
designers require
today and in the near
future.

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Design
Education
Dilemmas
Design education
today involves several
dilemmas. These
challenges are often
contradictory.

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To describe the future
of design and design
education, Don
Norman once quoted
Yogi Berra on the
nature of dilemmas.

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Yogi – and Don –
both said,

“When you come to a

fork in the road, take
it.”
(Norman 2016: 343)

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Nevertheless, we
cannot always take
both paths, or even
the best path.

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Here are some of the
dilemmas and
problems we face.

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This is a selection of
major problems as I
see them. If this were
an article rather than
a lecture, I would
name more.

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The top problem is
the kind of
preparation designers
need to address
today’s broad
problems.

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North American
universities begin with
general education
before professional
study.

4 years BA, 5 BFA +

1-2 MA or 3 MFA.

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General education gives
students a broad idea of
life in its many
dimensions, and a sense
of the arts and sciences
that an educated person
needs.

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Bologna and Australia-
New Zealand university
design schools focus on
professional study.

3 years BA (4 Hons) +
2 MA.

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Graduates emerge with
a narrow concentration
in design skills. Even
though students are
intelligent and creative,
they lack the broad
exposure to ideas that
they will need.

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North American PhD
programs build on 5-7
years of general
education and
professional training.

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PhD programs in all
fields include research
courses, research
methods, breadth
courses, comprehensive
exams, candidacy, and
thesis research –
another 4-7 years after
the master’s.
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Bologna and
Australia-New
Zealand design PhD
programs build on
3+2 studio courses
with 3 years of
research.

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There is little or no
required research
training. For practice-
based PhD programs,
all work is studio
work.

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This has a necessary
consequence in
professional practice.

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If successful design
practice requires a T-
shaped design
professional, 5 to 7
years of studio design
will only produce a
narrow specialist.

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There are two further
consequences for the
long-term
development of
design education.

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There are only a few
doctoral programs in
design built on the
North American
model.

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Universities hire
Bologna-model design
PhD graduates whose
research skills are not
comparable to the skills
of colleagues in other
fields and disciplines.

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Even North American
universities are hiring
Bologna-model design
PhD graduates on the
assumption that a PhD
means roughly the same
thing.

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PhD training in the arts
and sciences builds on
relevant research
disciplines, rather than
studio practice.

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PhD degrees in other
fields are equivalent to
the North American PhD.

This is not the case in

design.

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Departments hire at the
department level, but
the people hiring do not
themselves have a PhD
and a research
background. They can’t
evaluate a new hire
properly.

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Because PhD training is
different in design,
universities are not
aware that new PhD
hires may lack
preparation.

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This is creating a
problem across the field.
For design to become a
research-based
discipline, we need a
corps of skilled
researchers. We lack
these today.

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To develop effective
doctoral programs, we
need a corps of well
trained researchers with
good doctoral
supervision skills. We
lack these today.

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Another problem we
face is the lack of
skilled professional
designers teaching
studio classes.

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Design teachers in
most systems have
little or no
professional design
experience.

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They teach studio
skills as distinct from
studio skills in the
context of
professional design.
Some teach well and
some don’t .

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Many teachers today
are part-time
teachers with no
anchor in design or in
university-level
education.

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The experience, focus,
and professional
engagement of studio
faculty is a key
difference between
strong schools and the
rest.

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The career attrition rate
of design school
graduates around the
world suggests that we
may not need the
number of degree
programs in design that
we now have.

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While we have a small
number of first-rate
university-level
design schools, many
design schools are
failing in their
mission.

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The Flexner
Moment
In the first decade of the 20th
century, the Carnegie Foundation
engaged Abraham Flexner to
write a study on medical
education.

Flexner’s (1910) report led to

the radical renewal of medical
education in the United States
and Canada.

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The influence of this report was
such that it also led to major
improvements in the United
Kingdom and Europe.

This was the beginning of

modern medical education.

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Today, design schools face many
of the same problems that
troubled medical education at
the start of the 1900s.

Given the importance of design

in today’s world, this should not
be the case.

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If I were to call for one major
action for design education in
the world today, it would be a
call for our own Flexner Report.

It is important to understand the

shape and nature of design
education on a global basis
today.

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Of equal importance, it would be
valuable to have our best minds
working on the answer to a
specific question:

What should design education be

to meet today’s needs – and
what should it become to
educate tomorrow’s designers?

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Thank
you
References
Buchanan, Richard. 2001. “Design Research and the New
Learning.” Design Issues, Vol. 17, No. 4, Autumn 2001,
pp. 3-23.

Friedman, Ken. 2005. Six Economies for Design

Research. Keynote Speech. Founding Conference of the
International Association of Societies of Design Research.
November 1-4. 2005. National Yunlin University of
Science and Technology, College of Design, Yunlin,
Taiwan.

Friedman, Ken. 2012. “Models of Design.” Visible

Language. Vol. 46, Nos. 1 & 2, pp. 132-153.

97
Flexner, Abraham. 1910. Medical Education in the United
States and Canada. Bulletin No. 4. New York: Carnegie
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Gibson, William. 2003. The Economist. December 4,

2003.

Haskel, Jonathan and Stian Westlake. 2018. Capitalism

Without Capital. The Rise of the Intangible Economy.
Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Meyer, Michael, and Donald A. Norman. 2020. “Design

Education for the 21st Century. Forging Our Own Path
Forward.” She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and
Innnovation. [In Press.]

98
Nichols, Tom. 2017. The Death of Expertise. The
Campaign against Established Knowledge and Why it
Matters. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Norman, Donald. 2016. “When You Come to a Fork in

the Road, Take It. The Future of Design.” She Ji: The
Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, pp. 343-
348. DOI: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-
journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sheji.2017.07.003

Simon, Herbert. 1982. The Sciences of the Artificial.

Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press.

99
United Nations. 2015. Transforming Our World. The
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. A/Res/70/1
New York: The United Nations.
Accessed at <Sustainabledevelopment.un.org>

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Suggested Citation
Friedman, Ken. 2019. Chatterjee Global Lecture. Design
Education Today: Challenges, Opportunities, Failures.
Cincinnati, Ohio: College of Design, Architecture, Art and
Planning, the University of Cincinnati.

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About Ken Friedman
Ken Friedman is Chair Professor of Design
Innovation Studies at Tongji University College of Design
and Innovation.

Friedman is Editor-in-Chief of She Ji. The Journal of

Design, Economics, and Innovation published by Tongji
University in cooperation with Elsevier. He is co-editor of
the book series Design Thinking, Design Theory for The
MIT Press.

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Digital Copies Available
Free digital copies of this document and
other research development resources are
available in PDF format at URL:

http://tongji.academia.edu/KenFriedman

For More Information

Email: ken.friedman.sheji@icloud.com

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 Copyright © 2019 by Ken Friedman. Licensed under
the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0
International License. This document may be copied,
quoted, and printed freely.

Version 2019 October 3

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