Despite the growing popularity of business-oriented product design education programs, it seems that many design curricula approach product design more like a formula for a market with nothing but a bottom line, with no real social context or problem in mind to solve. I came across this satirical and shockingly accurate comic entitled “The Product Design Process: A Graphic Novel” by MIT grad Alison Wong. The illustrated e-book plays out a semester of a typical product design studio, and inadvertently raises some interesting issues about design education:

What responsibilities do design educators have to set humanitarian and real-world contexts as starting points for design problems? Why do so many design studios lack actual socially-based design problems as starting points for thoughtful student projects? How important is the business case and marketability of a product? Are marketability and helpful, humanitarian products mutually exclusive entities? Is this an educational or industry-based problem?

The comic begins with the product design studio’s professor stating “Welcome to Product Design Process, where you’ll have a group too big, a budget too small, a time too short, and a project too hard.” He goes on to frame the project: “Your team will be responsible for producing an alpha prototype of a product of your choice. It must work and look like a production product. You have a limited budget and must work together as a group.” The group proceeds to decide on designing a rock climbing belayer device, does potential customer assessments, product engineering tests, and marketability studies. The whole process is mired in inter-classmate politics, bureaucratic sub-group meetings, and unfruitful overcoordination.

So where’s the social context? Who is the client? Who will the product benefit? What problems are the product solving? There is no mention of any human element in any of this process, which should be cause for some serious re-examination. The problem is a lack of problem framing- there is no real context other than the fickle tendencies of relatively wealthy consumers. Let’s start with real problems and real people.

Granted, not all design programs are so formulaic as the comedically parodied example here. But we as consumers, educators, students, designers, producers, customers, and caring individuals, should approach design education as a viable arena for addressing and trying to solve real-world, socially based issues.

Let’s create educational programs that train future professionals to design with care and global optimism. Like so many other industries and markets, it all starts with education.

Thanks to Alison Wong for the great comic- download the entire 32-page book via her website here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 at 5:00 am and is filed under Talking Points, Tales of Great Design, Design Academics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.