Rethinking Design Education

This opening article for the special issue on the Future of Design Education traces paradigmatic shifts in design, from the twentieth-century mass production of artifacts to the twenty-first-century stewardship of evolving product-service ecologies. These shifts argue for a systems approach appropriate to the complex problems brought on by the industrial and information revolutions. Setting the stage for the following topical articles, the authors describe connections among human activities and technologies that are life-centered in their long-term impact on and by humankind. These changes are not simply in the things designers make but in the “why” of design practice under a paradigm that no longer focuses on the production of tangible goods. The article also addresses corresponding shifts in where designers now take action (for example, influencing organizational purpose, governance, infrastructure, and strategy, not just consumer-facing messages, objects, and spaces) and the lengthening of time horizons for evaluating design effects in natural, social, and technical systems. Ten principles for today’s designers offer guideposts for practice and inform a critique of the industrial-era traditions still present in much of contemporary design education.