What are designers for? By John Miller

Part of this agenda is supply driven - our design graduates are an undertapped resource. Our courses traditionally prepare them for the design industry, design practice or designer-making. A tiny amount of design graduates go for "graduate jobs" and neither are they well prepared to carve themselves out useful and fulfilling careers in SMEs.

Others have highlighted the large corporates/engineering focus of the US model. There was a secondary narrative to do with spin-outs (mostly fairly unconvincing). For the UK we need to describe how someone with a design training can have an impact on a business of 100 or so employees - developing an innovation culture through management or marketing or media or facilitation as well as design. This means developing course content, looking for role models and case studies other than design heroes and communicating the message. Importantly this needs to happen at school - if design colleges recruited students with Design and Technology and/or Business Studies A levels alongside the Art and Design Foundation route we might see a more diverse mix of expectations.

Teams and Individuals
All the teamwork we saw is not borne out in design education in the UK which is mostly based on individual development. Doing more teamwork and especially across courses will help our students develop their communications skills. Exotic ideas, prosaic communication? But not too much - I have a hunch that the immersion and ownership of an idea - the need to prove it and to own and answer robust critique is one of the things that makes our courses special.

Innovation and refinement
Continuing the theme, design promotes innovation but is also about refinement and beauty. An innovation brought to market too quickly may be rapidly superseded - ie we want to produce iconic or definitive products and services, not just this year's novelty. This is a potential niche for the UK - distinctive from the US due to the breadth of subject disciplines and diversity of students. Jonathan Ive = refinement. Baby nail clippers = innovative.

Craft
Our design graduates are such useful people because they have had a design education including real immersion in a subject. It takes a specialist to understand other specialists. There is a danger that adding a lot more business/anthropology/technology to the curriculum whilst broadening the "T" will lead to less accomplished designers and less useful employees.

Innovative educators
We didn't see them. A sense that the product design courses we saw were in the right place at the right time - the traditional educational experience they offer happens to offer something to do with "creativity" to business. There was little evidence of innovative teaching and learning practice. Perhaps this is an unfair characterisation? Anyone disagree?

Interest from students
I have mentioned business demand, but what of student interest? The courses we saw were all relatively small. If we have an SME agenda rather than a large corporates agenda we need to "turn out" many more of these new hybrid designers. Is it something that will interest 17 year olds or 21 year old grads? I mentioned schools work above. Cox talks about using the media and I think it's an essential part of the mix.