Towards Re-Imagining Industrial Design Education For The Contemporary Period

It is proposed that a progressive Design education should focus on supporting students in learning to self-manage ambiguity and bolster their agile independence throughout the tentative undergraduate years of growth. As the field of Industrial Design moves beyond its manufacturing roots, exploration of curricula that anticipates issues such as decolonisation, diverse participation and complexity in creative innovation is still not prevalent in this contemporary period. Such a context necessitates an accelerated disruption to traditional pedagogical practices, as seen in the RMIT University Industrial Design programme My First Six Months (MF6M) - a first-year learner-centred initiative situated around capacity development, student agency, self-efficacy, and disruption of power dynamics in learning and teaching. This paper outlines the adoption of the RMIT University, MF6M learner-centred pedagogical alignment into the 2nd and 3rd year vertically integrated studio environment, through the case study ‘Safeness by Design – Enabling an Ageing Workforce’ – a collaborative partnership with the Innovation Centre of WorkSafe Victoria. In curating the studio’s outcomes, it became evident that the embedded predispositions developed throughout their MF6M experience, activated the diversity of students’ thinking and acting in situations resembling real-world design practice. We found this model to be highly transferable, requiring less intervention and giving more flexibility to students, by reinforcing notions of independence, trust and self-efficacy in learning. Students are scaffolded as they explore and frame their own inquiry questions and continue developing their professional identity throughout their studies. In doing so, the classroom is firmly situated as a safe and democratic creative space, whereby teaching staff adopt a coaching role to establish a collaborative partnership, to further support student capacity and confidence.