Towards strengthening Methods in Design Education and Practice

Design skills and methods have been at the conceptual foundation of the design discipline(s) for at least the past half century. Over this period, design has also changed, focusing on new outcomes, serving new goals, and addressing different scales and broader application areas. On the one hand, there is a large set of methods and tools; on the other hand, there is growing visibility with ‘design thinking’ both giving design greater appeal and a shallower message. Currently many design schools struggle with adapting their curricula to meet the new demands for sustainability, diversity, and incorporating new technologies such as AI or Biodesign (designing as, with and for nature). Several academic initiatives have produced visions giving direction to those efforts. This paper reports the outcomes of a series of discussions by experienced educators, attempting to produce a specification of the goals and detailed objectives of design methods education. We share these outcomes not as a definitive prescription for the incorporation of methods within a design curriculum, but as a reference point for further development.