Collaboration: No Rockstars, Please by Paul Backett
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Oregon Manifest Brainstorm
This is the fifth post in a 6-part series from Ziba’s Industrial Design Director, Paul Backett, on rethinking design education. Read the Introduction to the series, Teach Less, Integrate More here.
Designers in the real world almost never work alone, but students frequently do. One of the great failings of modern design schools is how rarely they expect students to work in groups or with external partners, and how little attention they give to the mechanics of teamwork. Just as much as sketching and modelmaking, design students must learn to share their own ideas and build on the ideas of others; to produce and receive constructive criticism from their peers.
The most successful projects I have worked on professionally came from a collective rather than individual vision. Realizing that vision isn’t always fun and games though. Great ideas come from passion and tension, sometimes even arguments. Students need to be objective, to put their personal feelings aside, to not take criticism personally and work for the greater good of the team. These skills can be learned in school, but it’s far more common for students to work independently, under a culture of competition or even coddling.
Students need a sense of humbleness and openness to outside ideas, and there’s still no better way to develop it than tough, exacting critique. Leela Morimoto of University of Oregon’s ID program gives a mid-term presentation.
My professors were tough. They took no crap off their students and called us out when we hadn’t put in full effort—sometimes dramatically. Based on my interaction with students from dozens of design programs over the past decade, I’m not sure this happens enough these days. An element of cockiness is natural for designers, but it’s up to professors to hand every student enough humbling experiences that they develop respect for the ideas and work of others. It’s the same in the professional world: we have to be open and honest in our evaluation of ideas. The more exposure students get to this type of discussion, the better.
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