Chapter 10 - Design Education

Summary

Successful design depends on overcoming cognitive obstacles such as failures of attention, confirmation bias, fixation, and sunk-cost traps. A countermeasure is to keep multiple ideas alive by developing several prototypes rather than focusing on a single idea. A Design Heuristics tool consisting of cards helps by describing a strategy on one side of a card and an example of applying the strategy on the other side. Sketching offers opportunities for new interpretations and unexpected discoveries as illustrated by successive designs of the Sydney Opera House by Jorn Utzon. The Industrial Design Engineering program at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, and the New School’s Parson School of Design in New York City offer various approaches to design education. Although traditional design education should not be discarded, it requires a broader approach that includes material on cognitive science, anthropology and culture, political science, business, and ethics.