Design Thinking: a New Framework to View the World
In future of design, it mainly discusses about two roads that the future of design will take. One is design as a craft and another is design as a way of thinking.
The difference between craft-based design and design thinking is that craft-based design starts out as focusing upon the creation of beautiful objects. Craft-based designers can add value but they can not take the lead. Meanwhile, design thinking is of problem discovery, of enhancing the lives of individuals. Designers as thinkers can start playing senior roles in management far beyond what designers as craftspeople can do.
With the fast development of modern technology, common everyday devices became more complex. To make them understandable and usable, appear the fields such as human center design and human computer interaction as well as design thinking. The new design philosophy puts the long-term health and happiness of people as the major item of concern. It bridges between technology and people. Instead of the traditional opinion-based field, this is a evidence-based method and brings a new framework upon which to view the world.
As for design education, design today is much more than a craft. Design is a foundation, it bridges across all the specialized departments of a modern university. The learning of design thinking should not only be taught to business and management majors. The future designer sfuhould be a designer that have integrate knowledge of science, psychology, engineering and various of different fields to solve much more complex problems like economy, political, environment issues and so on.
Even the traditional design education is undergoing transformation and revision. Online education has made life-long learning possible for designers and more tools about design are available for all. Design students took online courses, workshops, guest lectures, tutorials about design software. Students can learn by themselves those basic design skills so that they can focus more on the development of design process and design thinking.
At last, the future of design can also be both craft and a way of thinking. In this case, designers do both doing and thinking. Besides, they can use external representations to aid their thinking.