The right mix for design learning
NEW AGE Design teaching in the era of fast-changing technology must have a blend of a variety of learning elements
The design industry is evolving and just like every other walk of life, is getting peppered by technology driven innovation, revolutionary digital practices and growing visual imagery. Offering a unique amalgamation of creativity and technology, design has become an integral part of the human life in the digital age, thus fueling innovation and redefining trends.
Leading fashion and design schools across the world are grooming tech-enabled professionals, who have a flair to handle aesthetics with precision. These changes reaffirm that fact that in today’s hyper-connected digital world, design education needs to incorporate an ideal mix of applied arts, visual representation and contemporary digital practices to make a truly experiential learning while finding alternative solutions to complex world issues.
THE VISUAL EDGE
As pointed out in an industry research, without any external aid, the cerebral and reasoning capabilities of a human mind gets restricted. In order to attain knowledge and a better perception on situations, the human mind requires external representations that would stimulate its cognitive and augmentative capabilities.
Visualization and writing tools help in reducing the mental pressure on brain thus allowing it to take on more complicated tasks and performing them with much ease. The complex relationship between cognitive ability and external aids prompting better visual imagery has evolved vastly over the past few decades. Today, designers across industries are constantly on the lookout for the answer of this pertinent question, ‘what else’. And in seeking this answer, they often end up making some assumptions and some predictions, which can go wrong and end up impacting business. With the design market, predicted to grow at a frenetic pace, growing to 160% its current size by 2020, these mistakes could prove costly. Visual edge is therefore very important.
“Through externalization of one’s thought, otherwise implicit meanings can be explicated, and information represented in a more abstract form (Olson, 1994). Through visualization, advantages of the powerful human visual system can be used to facilitate problem solving.”
THE TECH ADVANTAGE
An algorithm-based understanding of consumer habits comes handy to save business from dilemmas, specially for fashion and design industries. This technology enablement does not mean laying-off of the human mind—rather, it is the best tool to think new and do new.
Not everybody can leverage their creative and logical aptitudes optimally.
Artificial intelligence-enabled design bridges that gap and equips the human mind to think beyond boundaries. The example of Amazon Lab126 project that used machine learning by using images to learn a specific style, and replicate it further in other designs, is a perfect precedent for the design and fashion industry.
THE PERFECT BLEND
So, is technology going to replace the designer we knew? Not really! The results from AI enabled predictions are not uniformly spectacular—many of the designs were found not wearable—warranting the need for more R&D in automated design-prediction. For now, human intervention continues to remain supremely essential.
In future, a hybrid approach with designers becoming more tech-enabled will prove to be a great bet.
With design no longer being an optional subset of marketing, and becoming an integral part of business strategy, it is important to create the right balance between the various elements of the rapidly changing design industry i.e. applied, visual and digital. Many leading global brands are already leveraging a potent combination of visual and contemporary digital practices as part of their marketing strategies to establish a connect with their customers based on real-time project-based learnings.
This is illustrated by a recent tie-up between designer Tommy Hilfiger, IBM and New Yorkbased Fashion Institute of Technology to analyse real-time fashion industry trends, customer sentiment around Tommy Hilfiger products, runway images, and resurfacing themes to identify trending patterns, silhouettes, colours, and styles. The knowledge is relayed back to the designers, who make informed decisions about the next set of designs based on such insights. New age institutions would prove to be an enabler in creating the right strategy and nurturing competent professionals that add value to the design industry in India.
PROJECT BASED LEARNING
With social media becoming increasingly central in every facet of life, design education too will get stamped and swamped by this trend. Merging and regrouping of disciplines will design education leapfrog into the future. With students and professionals getting a chance to showcase their works on the social media channels, getting exposed to real life challenges and finding apt solutions will become the norm in design education.
As highlighted by an Intel research, “Project-based learning has gained a greater foothold in the classroom. Students get to learn better as they find a chance to dig into complex, challenging, and sometimes even messy problems that closely resemble real life.”
So, moving beyond rote learning, project-based learning offers an insight into the real world, challenging the cognitive abilities to create solutions that redefine the present and share an insight into the future.
To navigate through this age of intense globalization and digital transformation, it is important to view Design Education - not just as another study discipline, but a powerful means to infuse innovation and unlock true potential across industries. The author is Vice Chancellor, World University of Design