The participating companies presented a long wish list when the Danish Centre for Design Research put designers' competencies to the debate at a dialogue meeting on 2 June 2008. At the meeting, both the potential contributions of research to the design trade and the industry's future needs for designer competencies were debated.

By Hans Emborg Bünemann

The ideal designer is able to draw, think strategically and discuss his competencies in order to bring them into play in interdisciplinary settings. A wide range of needs is expressed when companies hiring trained designers are asked what sort of competencies they are looking for. And this was precisely the key question at the dialogue meeting arranged by the Danish Centre for Design Research, which formed the setting for a dialogue among a number of enterprises and representatives for the schools of design and architecture.

At the dialogue meeting about designer competencies held by the Danish Centre for Design Research, representatives from private enterprises met with heads of research from the schools of design and architecture. The schools attempt to match the students' competency profile to the companies' needs for strong professional skills and an interdisciplinary outlook. Photo: Christoffer Regild

The meeting aimed to strengthen the dialogue between businesses and institutions engaged in research and education, between practice and theory. This point was emphasised in the welcome address by DCDR Director Dorthe Mejlhede. She drew a parallel to the 19th century when medicine and engineering belonged in a university setting, where both these practice disciplines found a research tradition to refer to, based on their need for knowledge production and knowledge sharing. The design field has is a similar need for a closer dialogue between research and profession, she said, emphasising that this does not mean that designers should be researchers, but that they should be able to draw on research-based knowledge.

Mikal Hallstrup from the company Designit said that companies should get better at clearly defining their competency requirements. Photo: Christoffer Regild

T-Shaped People
During the dialogue meeting, several of the heads of research from the educational institutions addressed the notion of training designers to be so-called T-shaped people. That is to say, designers who have both a profound grasp of their profession, illustrated by the stem of the T, and a broad knowledge of other professions as well as culture and society in general, illustrated by the arms of the T.

Indeed, the schools' efforts proved to be in line with the wishes expressed by many of the companies in Denmark that hire designers. Research produces knowledge about material as well as immaterial design, which enables the schools to raise the bar in their educational programmes.

Søren S. Overgaard, a partner in the company E-types, highlighted the designer's craftsmanship in particular.
"If the T isn't deep enough, the designers can only talk, they can't draw," he said.

Along with the notion of maintaining physical design and visualisation as core competencies, several participants also underscored the importance of the arms of the T. Designers need to have the skills and the methods to reach out to other disciplines.
"We need graduates with a stronger strategic grasp as well as an international and business-oriented mindset," said Mikal Hallstrup, chief visionary officer in the company Designit.

The T-shaped competency profile was also crucial to Michael McKay, senior industrial design manager at Nokia Denmark.
"The designer's role is to connect the abstract business models with something that can be presented on a website and marketed," said Michael McKay, who believes that designers should be able to act as a link between different professions.
 

Michael McKay from Nokia Denmark emphasised the need for designers to maintain a clear focus on production while also having the capacity to contribute to the company's strategic considerations. Photo: Christoffer Regild

The Value of Research in Enterprises
It is in this field of tension between core competencies and the larger, interdisciplinary picture, that the value of research for design education becomes apparent.

At the dialogue meeting, the schools' heads of research explained how research-based education is carried out. For example, Anne-Louise Sommer, head of research at The Danish Design School said that a growing number of research projects are carried out in collaboration with companies, with design students as active participants.

Anne-Louise Sommer mentioned a research project entitled DAIM: Design-Anthropological Innovation Model, where students are involved in a pilot project about waste management as part of a larger study.
"The students are going to develop concrete design solutions as suggestions for future waste management approaches, based on independent research. The purpose is for the students to acquire methods and theories from research. This will strengthen their ability to develop an analytical, innovative and reflective approach to the design process. At the conclusion, the business partners of the research project meet up with the students in a unique, joint opportunity for all the partners to reflect critically on the various solutions," said Anne-Louise Sommer.

Clarifying Competencies
Research-based education provides the design students with a vocabulary and an analytical grasp enabling them to verbalise their competencies and their usefulness in the business setting. Several employers encouraged the schools to focus more specifically at how design and design research can help create value in the companies. According to the enterprises, future designers have to be knowledgeable about the processes they are going to be involved in, and they must be able to explain their role as team members in a way that the other partners can understand. At the same time, the designers must be able to draw or otherwise visualise the ideas and processes that a team expresses verbally.

In the long term, the design business has the potential to be just as big as the fields of architecture or engineering, said Kim Meyer Andersen from the company Kontrapunkt at the dialogue meeting. He emphasised that the schools must help create new knowledge within new disciplines, including, for example, service design. Photo: Christoffer Regild

Distribution of Labour Among the Schools
Both the companies and the heads of research from the schools are grappling with the issue of creating educational programmes that are able to meet the wide range of demands for designer competencies on the companies' wish list.

Kim Meyer Andersen, a partner in the design firm Kontrapunkt, heaped praise on the graduates from the schools. At the dialogue meeting he did, however, also bring up the need for more specific knowledge about what exactly the students learn in the various schools. 

Increased and more distinct specialisation in the schools would be a step in the right direction, according to some of the participants in the meeting. This would mean, however, that research and educational environments would have to select certain aspects at the expense of others in order to be able to focus on certain disciplines in particular.

University Degree
The gradual move toward raising the design education programmes to university status would, however, enable future students to switch between programmes and universities. Mads Flyvholm, head of section in the Danish Ministry of Culture, said at the dialogue meeting:
"We would like to establish university-level bachelor's and master's programmes, partly in order to promote collaboration with other universities. This would make it easier for the students to expand their cross-disciplinary competencies by transferring credits from other university programmes."

Such a move would also strengthen the internationalisation of the design education programmes, as it would make it easier for students to take a semester at a university in another country.

The dialogue meeting The dialogue meeting about the future of designers' competencies in Denmark was held at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Copenhagen on 2 June 2008. See the schedule and list of participants. Heads of design research at the Danish schools of design and architecture: Anne-Louise Sommer, The Danish Design School Thomas Leerberg, Designskolen Kolding Jørgen Rasmussen, Aarhus School of Architecture Anders Brix, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture The Danish Centre for Design Research contributes to the development of a strong design research environment in the schools of architecture and design. In 2010, the design research at the Danish schools of architecture and design is up for evaluation. The long-term goal is to raise the status of the design schools to university level and to train bachelors and masters at the same level as the schools of architecture.

 

Mind Design #10, 2008