Abstract
Modern academic design and engineering education adopted the issues and goals of holistic development of design competence. Holistic design competence is a combination of generic capacities: capability, knowledge, skill, experience and attitude. All capacities should be addressed in academic
education, but the development of attitude is not sufficiently emphasized. Designers’ attitude can be
seen as the relationship between a designer and the design profession. With a good designers’ attitude,
different types of design problems can be solved and all the capacities, including attitude, can be
developed. This paper proposes that developing a good designers’ attitude can be implemented in
design education and should be done. We present the five different elements that comprise an attitude:
communication, reliability, trust, motivation and open mindset. The relations between elements of
designers’ attitude and other capacities of design competence are discussed. We studied the
manifestation of attitudes and their development in a project of the so called Global Product Realization
(GPR) course. The GPR course incorporates students from several European universities who are
asked to solve a real design problem for an industrial company. The conclusion is that this project has
supported the development of all five attitudinal elements. Since GPR projects are multi disciplinary,
multi cultural and communication is non face-toface, a certain level of designers’ attitude is required
for such projects. Further research is needed to support the vision that development of designers’
attitude needs to be addressed earlier in design education, preferably from the very first course.
education, but the development of attitude is not sufficiently emphasized. Designers’ attitude can be
seen as the relationship between a designer and the design profession. With a good designers’ attitude,
different types of design problems can be solved and all the capacities, including attitude, can be
developed. This paper proposes that developing a good designers’ attitude can be implemented in
design education and should be done. We present the five different elements that comprise an attitude:
communication, reliability, trust, motivation and open mindset. The relations between elements of
designers’ attitude and other capacities of design competence are discussed. We studied the
manifestation of attitudes and their development in a project of the so called Global Product Realization
(GPR) course. The GPR course incorporates students from several European universities who are
asked to solve a real design problem for an industrial company. The conclusion is that this project has
supported the development of all five attitudinal elements. Since GPR projects are multi disciplinary,
multi cultural and communication is non face-toface, a certain level of designers’ attitude is required
for such projects. Further research is needed to support the vision that development of designers’
attitude needs to be addressed earlier in design education, preferably from the very first course.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Proceedings of the TMCE 2008 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Publication status | Published - 2008 |
| Event | Seventh International Symposium on Tools and Methods of Competitive Engineering (TMCE 2008) - Kusadasi, Turkey Duration: 21 Apr 2008 → 25 Apr 2008 |
Conference
| Conference | Seventh International Symposium on Tools and Methods of Competitive Engineering (TMCE 2008) |
|---|---|
| Country/Territory | Turkey |
| City | Kusadasi |
| Period | 21/04/08 → 25/04/08 |
Keywords
- global product realization
- design competence
- designers’ attitude
- academic virtual enterprise
- attitude development
- designer's education