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Learning to Practice : Nurturing Client Business in Design Education

This article presents research that examines design education and pedagogy. The data from which the findings are derived comes from a four-year ethnographic study from inside a design consultancy. The Lead Author had unprecedented access that resulted in in-depth and rich findings, which could not be easily generated. These insights would not normally be made available to the academic – or the commercial community, because they usually remain tacit within the organisation. Thus the research in this paper makes explicit the implicit learning processes within this organisation.

The research analysis and findings draw out academic and practitioners’ understanding of learning processes, culture and leadership which facilitate learning in industry, The research findings also offer an industry-academic critique of current design education, thus advancing design education and pedagogy through academic research in a commercial context. The paper goes on to synthesise these findings into directly applicable guidelines for implementation in design education.

Building on this work, the Lead Author was invited to give a keynote speech at Westminster Business Forum, and became an Associate member of the Associate Parliamentary Design and Innovation Group within Policy Connect - a Government ThinkTank.