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Education

Teach Slower to Teach Better

But what’s the speed of learning and how to speed it up?

“Over the last decade, as a rejection to a tired model of higher education, new educational programs and structures have emerged. Many of these are in the fields of design, digital product development, and programming. The new models of education take many forms. Some are short day-long or week-long workshops. Some are meetups and brownbags. Some are online, some offline, and some hybrid. What connects many of these models is their immediate vocational emphasis. The majority intend to train practitioners, not academics. The focus is on preparing people to do design and get jobs. (…) We need educational innovation, but not at the expense of quality. Students need the space to develop problem solving strategies. Speed is not in our favor here. Let’s all slow down.”

Jon Kolko a.k.a /jkolko | @jkolko ~ modernist studio

UX education: The rise of educational programs

UX programs must incorporate educational thinking as well (e.g. psychology, educational science and didactics).

“The future for UX depends on the people who choose to work in this field; their skills and experience are what companies are looking for. For the next generation of UX professionals, access to education, whether through traditional venues or online certificates and programs, is essential to gain the practical knowledge of ever-changing UX fundamentals and processes. UX certificate and degree programs may be a start for future UX candidates, but it will be experience that reinforces strong design and research skills.”

Lee Okan a.k.a. @SayVous ~ UXPA Magazine

UX mentoring at scale: A how-to guide

Growing the nextgen digital designers at scale.

“Traditional mentoring programs have a lot of value. But finding the mentors can be difficult, and then pairing them one-by-one with mentees can be time-consuming. Because the recruiting and matching processes are such a heavy lift, the number of mentees who can be paired with mentors is always limited to the maximum number of mentors. Many potential mentees are left without mentors. In this article, you will learn about the following: How we created rapid group mentoring activities, how we organize the mentoring activities so mentees and mentors get the most out of the time they have together, and all the details of logistics and recruiting, so you can organize a similar activity in your UX community.”

Bob Thomas and Jen McGinn ~ UXPA Magazine

Envisioning Futures of Design Education: An Exploratory Workshop with Design Educators

Rethinking design education for the 21st century, which is already almost two decades in the works.

“The demand for innovation in the creative economy has seen the adoption and adaptation of design thinking and design methods into domains outside design, such as business management, education, healthcare, and engineering. Design thinking and methodologies are now considered useful for identifying, framing and solving complex, often wicked social, technological, economic and public policy problems. As the practice of design undergoes change, design education is also expected to adjust to prepare future designers to have dramatically different demands made upon their general abilities and bases of knowledge than have design career paths from years past. Future designers will have to develop skills and be able to construct and utilize knowledge that allows them to make meaningful contributions to collaborative efforts involving experts from disciplines outside design. Exactly how future designers should be prepared to do this has sparked a good deal of conjecture and debate in the professional and academic design communities. This report proposes that the process of creating future scenarios that more broadly explore and expand the role, or roles, for design and designers in the world’s increasingly interwoven and interdependent societies can help uncover core needs and envision framework(s) for design education.”

Sapna Singh, Nicole Lotz and Elizabeth B.-N. Sanders ~ AIGA Dialectic

The Rise (And Fall?) of Corporate Design Education

Contrary to formal, institutional and state sanctioned design education, like colleges and universities (bachelor, master, and PhD).

“I believe in the power of design education to change people’s lives, to improve products, and to alter the strategic course of a corporation, for the better. I hope to see a resurgence of design craftsmanship training riding alongside design thinking training. I don’t think it’s impossible to teach craft, in a broad way, in an organization. But it will take more time and a different approach to training to realize the power of design as an applied discipline, and to recognize how important true competency of doing is for institutionalizing design and creativity.”

Jon Kolko a.k.a. /jkolko | @jkolko ~ The Modernist Studio