Responding to Industry Needs and a Rapidly Evolving Industry: A Design Thinking Approach to Undergraduate Course Development in Communication Design

The teaching of communication design balances creative and technical instruction, aiming to develop skilled graduates with the capabilities and knowledge to complete client projects effectively. It is a balance often scrutinized by design businesses who claim graduates lack the skills, knowledge, or preparation necessary to meet commercial realities. The design industry expects universities to align graduate competencies with professional requirements, producing students who not only excel in today’s cutting-edge technologies but also possess the skills to quickly adapt to the unknowns needed for tomorrow. In attempting to comply, universities must continuously advance curriculum design. Yet, the design profession constantly evolves, influenced by technological advancement, globalism, and shifting cultural trends. Could a university ever prepare graduates for such rapid change and uncertainty? The work shared within this thesis attempted to answer such a question by examining undergraduate design course material, its current preparation, and its ongoing relationship to an evolving design industry. While other studies exist, none applied research methods based on the same processes used in design practice, specifically the design thinking process. This process, used by designers to solve complex problems, also served as an underlying procedural framework for this thesis. The research involved a thematic triangulation of three case studies and an analysis of congruence and new opportunities between case study insights and prior pedagogy studies. The outcome is a propositional course outline and framework, leveraging industry partnership, interdisciplinary skills, and the encouragement of student meta-cognitive knowledge or, more simply, self-reflection.