Hasta La Ideas

All images courtesy of Design for America

My cell phone rang insistently one late Monday afternoon in August 2009 as I was in my kitchen preparing dinner with my colleague, Katy Mess. On the phone, two undergraduate students eagerly explained that they were too excited about their new idea to wait for our next meeting; they needed to share it now. Thirty minutes later, I was holding the watermelon they had balanced on their handlebars during their bike ride from campus. They joined us at the table, and we offered feedback while they animatedly outlined initial observations and ideas for ridding hospital ICU’s of infectious bacteria.

Why don’t more students feel that they can track down a design mentor or professor at home because they need to share their exciting ideas? Our society needs innovative and passionate teams of people to solve its complex problems. Innovation makes our economy tick and improves our quality of life. We will not be able to downsize or cost cut our way out of the world’s current problems. How does design education tap into the passion that students and professionals have around making a difference in the world?

Mountains of articles, programs and books are produced every day about fostering innovation. Most of them directing, telling, pushing, instructing. But you don’t need to tell the average student that innovation is important and exciting. Some already have a deep yearning to work for social good. You can trace their attempts to influence the world if you follow their desire lines.

We’ve all seen desire lines, weaving dusty paths across any university campus. People make these lines everywhere, not just across the physical landscape. Their desires and movement toward their interests can be traced across social media interactions and late night conversations. Students have the time and passion to tackle social problems, but rarely the right experience or mentorship to develop ideas grounded in design research or pursue projects through implementation. Socially-minded professional designers have more experience and resources, but little time. What if design education put design methodologies into the hands of everyone who wanted to make a difference, not just designers? What if we put engineers next to biology majors and music majors and business majors and had them focus on social problems together? What if design education itself was redesigned to harness this intersection of energy in the gap between what professionals and faculty have and what students want?

It’s refreshing to coach smart, energetic students. Some designers find designing shampoo bottles to be less than inspiring. DFA lets you focus on making the world a bit better. -Shannon Ford, Motif, DFA Design Coach

In the fall of 2008, Liz Gerber of Northwestern University had a wild idea. Inspired by organizations like Teach for America and challenged by Julio Ottino, the progressive Dean of the McCormick School of Engineering, to pitch a new program for Segal Design Institute, she grabbed a book off the shelf and designed a new cover with the words “Design for America” (DFA) mocked-up across the front. She drew upon what she’d noticed about her own design students, that they were often more attracted to conservative behavior than risks and potential failure in classes in order to preserve their grades. Other students were comfortable with risk, but disappointed in the limited opportunities available for getting hands-on experience through choosing their own design projects.

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