Our objective in the interviews discussing the Design Management (DM) Program was to determine DM’s effectiveness at the mid-point of the program. We were interested to know if current students’ own perceptions of the program had changed since they started, how they described the program to people unfamiliar with design management, and if they were able to implement the teachings thus far in their professional and daily lives. These inquiries and others like it in the future will help DM to discover, define, develop, and deploy an army equipped with the tools needed to attack unsustainable global issues.
It is important to explore this topic for many reasons. By definition, DM must educate around the premise of allocating creative assets to create a more strategic advantage. This program must sustain itself within that philosophy by not only meeting the expectations of its students, but also by exceeding those expectations and all those belonging to other DM stakeholders. DM must self-apply all of its lessons to ensure that it can deliver what it promises to deliver and that the system, at its core, is deemed sustainable.
It is also important to understand how students identify and define DM to a broader audience. Those who are less fortunate and can not benefit directly from the program must be indirectly educated by it if the global issues of today are actually going to be positively impacted by its population. The delivery of these lessons must also be allocated in a creative manner to those who are resistant to them; therefore, the sustainability of the program is at the mercy of the students and their willingness to adopt DM tactics.
Another crucial factor is that the program will fail if the students do not believe in the lessons at the core of the program, not just its surface objectives. The students must understand that it is not just important to recycle, but more important to see that deep design is implemented so there is less waste that needs recycling. DM must continuously identify ways to make the lessons of triple bottom line performance as adhesive as possible. It is particularly important now because of the immediacy of the impact of business’s 3P (people, planet, and profit) performance across the globe.
Lastly, this topic is important to explore because in order to evaluate and then reevaluate the program, DM needs first hand feedback from those who make the program possible. If DM is not itself sustainable, as earlier mentioned, it will be impossible to become the front-runner in the academic arena for educating the population about the identification and allocation of creative resources to create a sustainable, strategic advantage in business.
Our research into student satisfaction rates and the success of the DM program required a methodology that would uncover underlying attitudes and motivations of our target group. Therefore, we chose a qualitative research approach with a focus on inductive reasoning in one-on-one interviews with current DM students. We generated a set of eight questions to be asked in an informal setting in a period of twenty minutes. Due to the limited time allotted for each interview, it was important to create a casual and comfortable atmosphere and quickly establish a rapport with the interviewees. Our questions were structured in a way that would ease the interviewees into the subject matter by way of personal history. The first questions focused on factual information; how they heard about the program and why they chose to apply. Once they felt committed to the subject matter, the remaining questions were designed to dig deeper into their thoughts and perceptions about the program. We included questions that highlighted their interactions with third parties about DM, as well as questions about how their participation in the program has changed their own views and future goals. We were careful to generate a comprehensive set of questions that highlighted how well the program has communicated its curriculum to its students.
The DM students interviewed, 2 men and 8 women, are professionals from various design fields between the ages of 23 through 33. It was discovered that many students found out about the program in happen-stance ways. The limited descriptions of the program, made by the interviewee’s, centered on core elements from the DM ideology like “strategic sustainable advantage.” DM students often found explaining the program difficult. Also, there is a stereotypical resistance of people outside the program to the idea of designers having the skill set to manage a non-design workforce.
One of the most interesting findings was that about half of the people interviewed have not changed their career and personal goals since they entering the program and the other half have switched from a primarily self-oriented approach to becoming more collaborative in finding solutions to solve global issues. To date, most DM students believe that their expectations have been filled, some of whom have been helped in the various ways design can make businesses succeed. As part of their expectations some have had obstacles with applying sustainable practices as a part of business strategy of the company. Most people have utilized the tactical techniques of the program, but have not yet had the opportunity to use strategic techniques.
Overall, most find that the program is effective, though there are some reservations that have been noted. The consensus of the class is positive toward the program. While some have taken more from certain lessons, no one is displeased about the program as a whole. All class participants think it is a great investment for personal development and future growth as professionals working with the DM practice.
It is the authors' recommendation that the school work harder towards better self-promotion both inside and outside of the classroom. The benefits are two-fold: it will provide a larger student body, more people equipped to provide creative strategic advantage and advertise the program’s usefulness, as well as better educate the business world to the necessity of hiring such well outfitted employees. Further research into business perceptions of this program are important as well as further investigation into the program's future steps to elevate self-awareness. DM’s overall long-term success will be determined not by what the students take from the program, but ways in which they give back to the program by walking the line of sustainable development and continuing to educate the population on the importance of the triple bottom line.
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