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Gary
Can you briefly talk about, or take as long as you want; talk about your design path from RISD to DePaul in the context of the type of design work you were doing?
Heather
Hmm, OK. So, RISD I graduated in ninety-six - haha! o, some of my internships I had during School we were actually doing mechanicals; I remember doing mechanicals for Disney Christmas ornaments. But right around graduation there started to be email: this is making me feel really old! So, email came around and then the internet and in my first jobs I was doing things like traditional branding, package design, a lot of package design actually, and I worked for a company called Fitch and they were known as one of the first multi-disciplinary firms, because they had…they actually would design the coffee machine, then they would design the interface for the coffee machine, we would design the package design, all the sort of associated collateral items and then the architecture part would design what the store would look like; for example, they did a lot of JBL speakers and various coffee pots, things like that.
And so I feel like that experience really molded a lot of where I am today because it allowed me to think at a pretty high level, even thought I worked in the silo of communication design when I was there and so I continued to work at a lot of more brand design firms and then around ninety-nine, I got recruited from a place called Sapient: it’s now called SapientRazorfish, owned by Publicis, and so I worked as a designer and when I went there they were still pretty tech consulting, like kind of like a McKinsey or, you know, I’m not sure what you would call it but all the design studios when I left to go there…oh, you’re making a huge mistake, why would you go work at a place like that? But I was really tired of kind of the hierarchy and a lot of the ways that traditional design firms worked and I didn’t feel like I had enough mentorship and I wasn’t learning enough business skills and so I took a risk and I went to this place because a couple of my friends were already there and liked it. A couple of my friends from Fitch actually.
And so most people who worked in internet space in ninety-nine, it was a big messy time but kind of amazing as well because you had, you know, Engineers and Product Designers and Graphic Designers and soon to be Information Architects kind of all figuring out how to do things, what their roles were, and so…and you know, I mean like a lot of the websites I worked on were the first time a company ever had a website, so we worked on Chase Manhattan Bank and stuff for Lotus, so that was amazing to…
Gary
Lotus Notes!
Heather
Right! Like…and we were doing actually apps for them, like messaging apps and things, so…and I think being there, you learned things like business strategy skills, how to run a meeting, how to give reasoning for your design and work on these really big teams. And I think in the early days of that, Designers, Graphic Designers, were often skinning things and not really playing more strategic roles that people who had Engineering backgrounds were and that really bothered me, so I worked pretty hard to kind of learn…I actually didn’t learn how to code well or anything like that but I really learned how to synch and how to understand these really big problems. So, how to go into a meeting and ask the right questions, how to understand who to ask for what or how everything connected.
And so I feel like again, there was two, kind of those two first jobs were pretty…they molded a lot for me; I feel lucky to have sort of been in those spaces. And then, lots of little roles in between but I ended up leaving Sapient and starting my own business, which I really had from 2001 until 2013 and a lot of my clients actually came from them, so, projects for them that were too small or they would bring me on to projects as a contractor and then other big clients as well, so I worked as…running my own business; at one point I had four employees. For a long time, and it ended up being a pretty great thing to do, especially as I had children, could be a working mom and run my own space and hire help when I was busy and things like that. So that was interesting. And then when I…during that time, because I had web skills, I ended up Adjunct teaching at RISD where I went to School so I started teaching pretty young. I taught primarily web design but then I started teaching other things while I was there, so I was always teaching; I just wasn’t a full-time teacher.
And then when we moved to Chicago in 2013, I think that’s when we moved, I was still running my own business but was kind of getting tired of it; a lot of the people that I’d worked with were doing different things; I was having to fly; I was flying to Seattle and to some other places for clients; I was just ready for a change, so I had seen DePaul’s posting for a full-time role, applied, really liked the people I met with and so now I’m entering my fourth year of actually full-time teaching. So, even though I’m pretty experienced in general, I’m still fairly new to full-time teaching which as you know, is quite different than Adjuncting, especially when you move from an Art School to a University. So, you know!
Gary
Yeah!
Heather
Yeah, that is like me summarizing twenty-two years in however, five minutes.
Gary
No, but there’s a ton of…and that’s what…so, for the listeners, I was…the reason I found you was because of DePaul hosting Design Incubation and I was initially going to interview you about that, but then when I started like looking at our history and everything was like, holy crap, because you are the perfect case study of the evolution of design; it has happened, it started when you first graduated and…you’ve like, lived it.
Heather
I know, it’s kind of weird, right, to feel like you’re living history and I think, I mean, I look at myself and I think, am I actually that old? I feel like I’ve lived multiple lives. Even just in the workspace, so it’s…yeah, it’s kind of weird. And I feel like, I don’t know if you but I’ll think back to the dot-com times and it feels like the gold rush. I mean, it just feels like I lived in this part of history that was a mess and also equally amazing, to have experienced that feels, I don’t know, just…feels kind of special to me. I have really great memories of those times, so…
Gary
Well I don’t think it’s not your age. And I’m going to say that because, and I tell my students this all the time: the iPhone came out in 2007 but the Media Queries didn’t come out until 2010, full-on browser adoption of Media Queries didn’t really roll out until 2011, 2012, so we’re now talking about a profession being able to do responsive web design is six years old.
Heather
Everything happens so fast.
Gary
Yeah, and so there’s been zero time to, I mean, how long has print been around?
Heather
Right, I know.
Gary
If we haven’t figured out best practices by now in print design; there’s a problem with us!
Heather
Yeah, yeah, I know.
Gary
Whereas…and so I think that’s what makes it feel like super-old, because of the velocity which it’s evolving, but at the same time it’s also why…it’s not really that old.
Heather
I mean, and it’s interesting too just to think about that, when it was first happening, no one made web style guides, made these big web style guides, but now they’re just built-in. But I think what’s interesting to think about now, and there was a great article in Dialectic with two opposing sides about web. I mean, now everything’s so homogenous because everything’s a system, right? Everything’s so systematized to make it easy but it’s super-boring, so yeah, it’s just even interesting to see that evolution across the twenty years or however long it’s been.
Gary
Yeah, the design systems.
Heather
Yeah.
Gary
You’re not a fan?
Heather
No, I’m mixed. I mean, I think the systems make things great for accessibility, for ease, to democratize design, so everybody can design. But that’s also a curse too because then you have people designing who really don’t have the background or the skills to do it and are putting stuff out there that’s maybe not serving a very good purpose or being helpful, and I think everything looks very much the same. I mean, it’s kind of the problem with design thinking too is, it’s leaving, it’s trying to just make everything so easy but it’s leaving very little room for new thinking or creativity and so these are like not fully formed thoughts but things that kind of go through my head about, you know, I guess where we’re at with all of it, you know?
Gary
Yeah, well my personal take on it is that they are not inherently good or bad.
Heather
Yeah.
Gary
It is the implementation of it. So, as everybody says, in design, we’re problem-solvers; we work really well with constraints. So if the design system is the constraint, make it interesting. But if the design system is done…built…is fundamentally sound, there will be some coherence to it but you should be able to…and so that’s kinda how I see it. So, with the design system: that’s what the industry is going towards.
Heather
Right.
Gary
But is design education preparing students to not just be skinners of that system and I love that term that you said…
Heather
I know.
Gary
Or are we teaching them to use that design system in better ways? And quite frankly, I don’t even think we’re even teaching them what systems are.
Heather
No, to all of that. That’s the million dollar question, right? And of course like you, I think about that all time: how can I teach students everything that they possibly need to know, right? Are you supposed to teach them a whole slew of skills but then they come out and they’re not the best visual designer; should they stay kind of siloed but they’ve, you know, dipped their feet into all these parts and there’s no easy answer for that; probably depends on the structure of the School, right?
But I feel like I really try to make projects where they have to think about form and systems but the content of the project has them thinking about more global things, and especially ethical things or…so I think of that as like making with meaning, so projects that just have them have to think, answer big questions, think globally and things like that, so I think everybody, I mean, we know everybody’s trying to figure this out right now. And even things like if you’re…everything’s moving into voice or a lot is moving into voice; what part do designers play in that? Are they just designing the interface or do they need to understand UX for voice? I don’t have an answer for that either but I think about it a lot!
Gary
This is an over-generalization, but I think most design curriculums across the United States generally have one, maybe two web interactive, however you want to label it, courses. And the Faculty who teach those courses are saddled with teaching everything that a student needs to know in those two courses to get, you know, to be…qualified for maybe eighty to ninety per cent of the jobs that are out there now.
Heather
Yeah, it’s very crazy.
Gary
Yes. So, the fact that you’ve…you’re a perfect bridge, I mean, and so I’m like in the same boat as you. I could be technically be the bridge but I spent more of my time on the academic side of it, where you had your toes dipped in, seeped in both but more towards the professional side. How much of that print design stuff, how much is applicable?
Heather
Oh…gosh. I mean, I guess you know in a weird way, I don’t really separate print and web. I don’t separate the parts of design very much at all; to me it’s just design. So you kinda said problem-solving; I’ll think, OK, and this probably comes from being in consulting, right? A client comes or artist comes or…it doesn’t always have to be business-facing. But client comes and here’s where they’re at; you ask them, where are they at in this space, what are they trying to do better? What would they like to do in five years? Maybe they have a vision of what they think or how design can help them but it’s obviously bigger than just design; so many other things. So, asking those questions and then formulating things to help them achieve those goals. So you don’t really do that in a classroom: maybe we should.
Gary
Exactly.
Heather
Or like strategic thinking, right? I mean I guess some upper level electives, you do a little bit of that, but to me, at least a good design program or a willing designer who starts working in the space, ultimately they’ve learned a way of thinking and making and showing a vision for something, so really good designers to me could become a pastry-chef; they could become entrepreneurs like Airbnb, they’re from RISD; they could become anything because they know how to think.
Gary
Yes.
Heather
So…then, how do you put that into curriculum, right?
Gary
No, OK, so to drag this out for me a little bit more. So,, OK; so you have to ask, because you ran a business. So you’re asking all these business questions that inform the design, right?
Heather
Yep.
Gary
So, when we’re in the classroom, we’re not having the students ask those questions, or are you? And otherwise then they’re just becoming skinners, like you said.
Heather
Yeah, I actually do have them ask the questions.
Gary
OK, how?
Heather
At least in my web class so I’ve taught Web at DePaul maybe a handful of times and I don’t have it perfect yet and we only have ten weeks, but typically when I do it, they’re re-designing a website or an app or something but I have them start with researching user, you know, various forms of ethnographic research, competitive analysis of the field, inspiration, how do they fit into this vertical space; wireframing, journeys, process flows and evaluating the current state of the brand, if the brand already exists. So I shove a lot of stuff into the class and then they have…they maybe get to design a certain number of templates. So I try to give them that kind of thinking but again, it’s only in ten weeks so it’s not really enough time and then as a result I feel like their visual designs are only OK.
Ideally I would teach that over twenty weeks; first part is more like you would if you were actually working on a big site or…and then you’d actually consider the full digital experience: how does this translate to other parts, so, I don’t know, these are all things I’m thinking about all of the time. And then I was trying to think of when I’m teaching more like a foundational class, how am I approaching that higher level thinking? Because I know I am; I just don’t know if I’ve ever articulated it before. I’m definitely not just having them look at form, even though it’s an intro to visual design; I’m having them think. I’m never very focused on the tool that they use, so if we do an animation, we do this six-second animation of a point line plane.
I don’t care if they build it in stop-motion; I don’t care if they build it in PowerPoint or animated pdf, I just care they articulate their ideas, because for me, when I was working, the important part was that you had a good idea and the tools are always changing and if you had to find someone to help or find someone who could make your idea better and advocate for that, then because the idea’s good, I feel like that’s a really important skill to have. Does that make sense?
Gary
Yeah…no, it totally makes sense and so here comes the flip-side that I keep coming back to, and it has to do with, OK, I’m not sure that in a curriculum, I’m not sure that we’re teaching that thinking…I think we’re training just for them to be skinners, and this is holistically, across the entire curriculum.
Heather
Yeah, yeah; totally.
Gary
But, you just said it: designers are becoming entrepreneurs, so that means…so if we…so, fundamentally, I think we’re doing something very right or we wouldn’t have so many designers becoming entrepreneurs, because we’re…so we are training thinking by doing these…just basic visual exercises. And so I’m wondering what is it about that we are doing now that is making prolific entrepreneurs and what is going to be the domino-effect if we, I guess maybe lack for a better term is, what if we do get really UX/UI focused design. Does that take away the entrepreneurial spirit?
Heather
Oh I don’t think so. I mean for me, why UX is so business-centric to begin with, user business-centric, that you learn a lot of skills from that. I mean, I would say I learned a lot of my business skills from the people who were playing that role of Information Architect because they’re having to think of those things, so…but I guess what I fear is that when, like I said, when things become too systematized you lose kind of raw creativity or the ability to look at things in a new way and say, well this system doesn’t work; it needs to be re-thought somehow, right? I don’t know.
Well, I’m thinking about the skinning factor too and, for example I think what really bothers me is, you see a lot of business schools now doing Design Thinking and like I even see it at DePaul where suddenly they’re having…the Business School has this big design contest going on and who can launch the best product? And they have so much funding and so much money and all these business people are doing "design", but it’s not really well design. But yeah, they make it happen a lot more than our students do. And maybe…maybe that’s OK, I don’t know, but a lot of the times I feel sort of angry about it; or maybe jealous or maybe should we be doing that or should we not? What’s the right role?
But I guess what it is that I want our students to have some of those skills so that when they have a great idea, it’s them that’s launching it, not someone who has a business degree just because they knew how to do it. Do you know what I mean?
Gary
Yes, I am crazy frustrated. I was actually going to give a talk at UMBC about, I called it Demystifying Design Thinking because I am just sick and tired of the way businesses have co-opted…
Heather
Totally.
Gary
…a design process that to me started back in product design, in architectural design, a bazillion years ago of just a methodology of making sure you’re making the right product for the right user, whether that’s the potato peeler or whether that’s a banking app. So yeah, I’m totally…like you said, frustrated, jealous…Does it really even matter I’m so in that camp where I can’t quite…
Heather
Yeah, I know, and…yeah, part of it is like they get the funds, you know, and then the really smart Schools like, I don’t know for a fact, but a Carnegie Mellon or an MIT or Stanford, which I don’t totally think of as a design school; they get money and they’re, I’m sure they’re teaching some version of design thinking. RISD does not. I still don’t think they teach design thinking, but you certainly learn how to conceptualize and think although I didn’t get any…I didn’t get any business skills there. And I…maybe that’s OK because, I don’t know, I got them elsewhere but maybe I was lucky.
Gary
Well, I mean, have you read Dan Pink’s book, The Whole New Mind?
Heather
No. Haven’t even heard of it; I’ll add it to my list.
Gary
Read it, because it’s…it’s like preaching to the choir, but the way he kind of, I mean, the whole idea is that, in his book he crystallizes design thinking, this creative problem-solving, why designers are better at it is just that, you know, that point line plane project that you talked about; the act of doing that; that is non-linear problem-solving.
Heather
Totally.
Gary
And so you do an enormous amount of that, across the four years of your design curriculum. That makes you…that makes you better able to solve problems.
Heather
Yeah; interesting. Right.
Gary
And it’s really simple as that. And so then I look at those…IBM saying, we do design thinking and all these other things that are saying, doing design thinking; like no: you’re just co-opting a process. You can’t have design thinking skills if you haven’t done design. Or great art; just this idea of creative problem-solving, these little exercises over the course of a really long time. Anyway, so…that’s my little…
Heather
The design thinking…I mean, design thinking is good, but it only gets things to a certain point, I think.
Gary
Exactly.
Heather
Yeah…I’m thinking a lot too about…there’s a book, Maker Centered Learning and they talk about how…companies now…students are so systematized in their K12 Ed and even a lot of college Ed that they can’t just tinker and make things up or make believe or see things in a new way and I feel like that still happens in Art School, which is really, really important and to me design thinking works kind of against that in a lot of ways. And I sound like I’m crapping all over design thinking but I actually use it and I like it; I just think it’s not the only way.
And I was thinking about a conversation I had about process with my Intro Visual Design students where I said, does anyone know what process is? What’s your process and someone said, well, I feel like I should have a vision and then execute it. And I said: no. Some people do but I don’t. I said, I actually find my discoveries through making; I have to be making to determine what it’s going to be, I said, so then we had this whole conversation about how what you just said, non-linear, or that everybody’s process can be different, and get equally good results depending on who you are or if maybe you sketch to writing, maybe you sketch through drawing, maybe you sketch on an iPad, you know; maybe you don’t even sketch? Maybe you start backwards, I don’t know, so the thinking about process or non-linear making is really important to understand.
Gary
Yeah, and I think that’s my problem with corporations or the business side who are all excited about this design thinking because they’re trying to make it into a process, and you really can’t make…it is a process for creatives to systematize the creative process, but if you don’t already have the creative process…
Heather
Right!
Gary
There’s nothing to systematize, right?
Heather
I know, I know.
Gary
So, anyway, that’s how I see it, so that’s where design thinking is a thing; it’s just a research method…to me it’s just a research method for designers, that could be applied to other things if you have that non-linear problem-solving skill set already.
Heather
Right, right, and then I’m thinking about business too; I think a lot about…I think I teach it because I have it, especially in upper level electives that are more practical in nature I’m teaching some of those business skills but do they have a class, how is it folded in or not? I don’t know; I think about that a lot. I was potentially going to teach Creative Entrepreneurship in our Business School and probably will at some point in the future, which I think would be interesting to teach business students and see what that’s like. I’ve never done that before.
Gary
Oh, I have, because I did that. I did a class for Design Thinking for the Social Entrepreneur, because I knew that it would be like a totally sexy sell because of the name and I had business students in it and they did fine, and in fact I think they were kind of more open to it than some of the designers that were on the course.
Heather
Yeah, that’s interesting. That’s interesting.
Gary
Because I think the designers came into it with an attitude of…well look, I’m already a designer. But…so they had the non-linear problem-solving skills but they didn’t have the system to utilize it better, I guess. Anyway. So…I’m teaching…so I’m teaching Web Design. I’ve got my one course and I start…so where I struggle with, because I start with…I have my students, start at the beginning with client discovery meeting and then it goes all the way through until they create a clickable prototype in InVision or XD and they present that to the client. So…where I have trouble is, where to introduce Information Architecture; where to introduce content inventories. And I’m not spending a ton of time on it. Because I don’t think they need to know how to do it at like a super-duper level…
Heather
But they need to know what it is.
Gary
Exactly. And so I struggle with…it’s the where. Because the Information Architecture informs the wireframing, but it’s happening simultaneously because these are probably…so what do you think about that? What would your…
Heather
You know, I feel like the way I probably teach it isn’t necessarily the right way; it’s the way that I learned how to do it, so I’m thinking about the content part too because a designer who understands content can really set themselves apart and content drives everything, right? And so I do have them do a little bit of understanding content systems, nomenclature, voice and tone; I’m talking half a class because we don’t have time for more than that, but at least then I know they understand it’s something to consider.
But I feel like I have them doing content stuff and we’re doing like really basic marketing sites in this web class; we don’t have a class with more advanced things yet like big back-end apps or anything like that, but I have them doing content and IA stuff sort of like organizational models at the same time and then they’ll move into wireframes, and then they’re kind of looking at branding a little bit, while they’re doing their wireframes, because they can, so they might know the color systems already, or at least they know the brand attributes so they can determine what colors might be appropriate, so I have them do a lot of stuff kind of simultaneously and then move forward but same thing with the tools; we’re not using Sketch yet and we should be.
Probably we’ll introduce that very soon, but a lot of times, if they want to do wireframes with a Sharpie marker or they want to do them in Illustrator or they want to do the in Viseo, I don’t really care because it’s such a…because it’s just a basic marketing site. I think if we were doing more complicated stuff, which they do a little bit more in our UX D major then we should….we would be but soon; soon enough I hope.
Gary
You know what? I’m going to jump because you…bit of serendipity and it’s…
Heather
Oh, OK!
Gary
It’s the Sketch question. So, I’m bringing it up because literally this past Thursday, I took some of my students to a design firm and all semester I’ve been harping on students use anything but XD. And so my students asked, because they want to use XD and so the firm made me re-think my thinking on this to a point. So they asked the question, historically we’ve been using Sketch but we’ve been playing around with XD and the reasoning was they already have to buy a creative cloud subscription, and now that XD is free for developers, you can get just XD for free, they don’t have to pay for separate Sketch licensing, like, upgrades once a year.
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Heather
OK.
Gary
And I was like…crap, I knew that was going to happen. But I noticed…but they’re still using InVision for their clickable prototypes.
Heather
Ah, interesting.
Gary
Yeah, and it’s like…I thought more…and so I thought more and more about it. Really, when you’re using XD, that feels like they forgot that this is a collaborative enterprised software, because they’re still working towards the solo rock-star designer model and so that’s why I think people are still, because InVision is like: no, there’s so many different stakeholders and they’ve thought about the process, so stakeholders can have input on all these different phases. And so now I’m kind of thinking more about, well, I think InVision Studio may be the way to go. I keep going back and forth between Sketch and InVision Studio and then every now and then, XD brings up something that…oh, they’re thinking about artboards; maybe I should give them another chance. So, what are your thoughts on this whole thing?
Heather
I don’t know; I actually just hate all of it and I feel like…I feel like being, I don’t know, I guess it comes back to the role. I mean, if we’re talking about Graphic Design, whatever that means any more. What’s the role they play versus an Information Architect, versus a Developer? We’re always going to have the unicorn who can do a little bit of all of it. But if we’re focusing on education for GD, assuming they want to get a job, and what’s their ultimate path? Those vary: do they want to be a creative director who’s a thinker? I guess the thing I think about with all these tools is, are you so in the weeds that you’re forgetting the big picture of everything? I don’t know.
And so then what’s the answer to that? And then power too, power for all these apps, like Adobe having power or it’ll be interesting to see where it all unfolds. We also have a lot of students who are on super-tight budgets, so we have some students who…I don’t know, they don’t buy the Microsoft Suite because they can use Google; they only use Adobe at School and they have something else at home and so I also think a lot about the future of software or things that are more open access like, how is that going to evolve? I’m totally not answering your question really because I don’t know how! I’ve gone down another rabbit-hole!
Gary
Well no; these are things that…as educators, at least, I’m struggling with, because I can…Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo and now Affinity Publisher, whatever it is; it’s literally for forty bucks, like a hundred and twenty for all three, you have InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator. Quality programs, so then now you throw in free InVision Studio. Do we even need Adobe?
Heather
Well…and the truth is, if I think about things I actually use in Adobe, there’s like three things in each app. I mean, I don’t use any crazy filters, hardly ever; once in a blue moon, so the amount of those pieces of software that I’m using is so small, and that’s the joke too about apps on a phone is my daughter will be like, well I did that with this free app. And a company needs to make money; I’m not saying it has to be free but especially for students, cost is, I don’t know, it’s something to think about too when they’re paying for their own. I mean, some Schools I suppose…like we have it on our computers but for the students that have their own laptops because they’re commuting and so on, I don’t know…I don’t know. I don’t have any answers for you, Gary, for that one!
Gary
Yeah…no, it’s quite alright because I…I don’t know. I let the students pick and I just tell them the pros and cons for each.
Heather
Yeah, to know what…I mean, if they’re adaptive thinkers, because every company I’ve worked at expects something different, so if you’re working at a certain company, but if you’re running your own thing you can do what you want as long as you’re articulating to the client and you’re getting the end result that they want, right? But I’m thinking about I told you how my colleagues and I got a curriculum grant so we’re working with ten industry partners in Chicago and we’re having students observe them as they work and then we’re hoping to use that information to re-write our web curriculum.
Our web curriculum needs some help, so that’ll be interesting because we’re looking at ten places, big to small, in-house to not, just to see what they’re using at this moment in time and changes in a hot minute, right? So…and I already feel, because it’s been…I’m entering my fourth year at DePaul which means I’m doing much less consulting, so I already feel like in three years what I would have been doing then is totally different than what’s happening now, which is part of the reason for doing this research so we can see because, you know, at least across Chicago, how all these different places are doing it.
Gary
You know what? Again, let’s…so, I’m going to just say responsive web design. I mean, we’re not going to talk about app, we’re not going to talk about anything else. So, responsive web design…six years old.
Heather
Yeah. Is it six?
Gary
Well, I go by when the browsers could actually…when a designer and developer could write code that could be ubiquitously used.
Heather
Got you, sure.
Gary
And I go back to 2012.
Heather
OK. You’re good at knowing these things!
Gary
Well, it might be 2011 but when the last browser, like finally adopted the majority of the stuff, of the standards.
Heather
Got it, sure.
Gary
So, you can argue, but anywhere from six to eight years is what the web design profession is at this point. We don’t, I mean, any…there is no standards for that. There couldn’t have been, and so I think that’s what we’re struggling with and I’m just…instead of like, like I said: where do I fit in the Information Architecture when I talk about it to the students? Where do I talk to them about OK, when do we need to add a break point to this content? And instead of maybe looking to the industry, maybe it’s just time that design educators who are thinking about this stuff is say, this is when it needs to be. Because I think you’re going to go…I’m willing to bet that you’re, when you do this study, I think you’re going to see that all ten are doing it differently.
Heather
No. Me too; I totally do. But I’m hoping there’ll be some high level…some umbrella of OK, well, here’s what…here’s the kind of skills which I mean I kind of think I know what they are but I want to prove it! Here are the skills the students need that are across all these places; there’s business thinking, problem solving, ethics, future, some speculation of how the product will adapt and change. I mean, I don’t know, but loosely. Those are hard to map to learning outcomes! But not impossible, I suppose. I may have to share…I’ll share it with you when we’re done. It has to be done by June, so…
Gary
How’s that when you have to report it back to whoever gave you money?
Heather
Yep. Yeah, exactly! I’m the helper on it, so really it’s my colleague, he’s gotta make it happen.
Gary
In this…you were on the YMILY podcast a little while back…
Heather
Yes.
Gary
And so I listened to that episode and one thing that you mentioned in that podcast that I kinda like want to see how you’re incorporating in the classroom is, return on investment and one that I like is, key performance indicators. How do you attach those to a project? Yeah.
Heather
Well it’s easy in a web class, right? I mean…well, is it easy in a web class? Hmm…maybe not those two. I suppose it depends. I just also taught a class called Client and Community; I taught it for the first time, so it sounds like you do a lot of this as well, so we work with a client, we work with Youth Job Center, a ten week class, and it was the first class where I really didn’t prepare any materials; I wanted to run it, twenty students, kind of like a design studio, very much Sapient style. So we had an initial kick-off meeting, we did research, proposed solutions for their various business problems and then we had a mid-way check-in to show our different ideas and then at the end, the students all showed their work.
And so in that particular class, I don’t know if we talked about return on investment per se, but we were talking a lot of business terms, definitely, so that’s…you know, and it’s funny because I was also thinking about, I was reading the DePaul magazine for some weird reason and they were talking about their Law School just implemented what they call a Year Three Professional thing; kinda reminded me of North Eastern’s Design School or University of Cincinnati with the Co-op thing and just had me thinking a lot about how this idea of folding in more professional time is really important to learn things like that and I don’t think any school is really doing enough of it. And then I’m like, do I even want to push that because then there’s less time learning design skills; I don’t feel like our students are always graduating with solid design skills yet either…
Gary
Yes, yes.
Heather
So what do you take away from, I don’t know, do you require a five year? Do you do a six month extra thingamajig? I don’t know, but we do require this Client and Community class or some type of experiential learning and I think…I feel like with this Client and Community class, I don’t love any of their final projects, but I would like to think that everything they learned in that class is going to really, really prepare them for their first meetings, their first jobs, because they learned how to ask questions, how to research, how to engage with clients in a variety of types of meetings; they all had their roles in the big meetings; we had a note-taker; we had a meet-and-greeter; we had someone at the whiteboard, we had someone doing tech; we had someone in charge of snacks, so they understood, to run a good meeting, everyone has a role and it’s really clear set expectations and things like that. So I literally just finished that class and I’m still kind of processing the outcomes from it if you know what I mean.
Gary
Yeah, I do something similar with my web class. It didn’t work out this semester, but I get what I like to call a faux client because we can’t…obviously they don’t need just a skin of a website, so it’s hard…so what I’ve done is just I’ve found somebody who’s willing to come in and we have…come in like three times, maybe, and the first time is just they need a website or they have an existing website that we’re going to re-design and they come in, they get interviewed, you know, like the initial client meeting: like hey, what do you need? Let’s look into your personality, and then we go back to them with like the mood board/style tiles and we say, OK are we thinking, are we in the same…are we talking the same art direction here? And then I like the idea of element collages where they design the elements first, not the web page first. And so then the client comes back and again it’s like, yeah, this is…get the client approval, and then the very last thing, do like a client presentation.
Heather
Yeah, yeah, it’s so good for them; super-important.
Gary
But then it doesn’t leave time for like you said. I would love to do the daily UI challenge. Literally, you just need to spend time sitting there designing buttons.
Heather
Oh yeah, yeah. I never thought about that.
Gary
Where does that happen? Where does the honing of the visual skills happen?
Heather
Well, I mean I feel like too moving beyond just web. A lot of the stuff we did at Fitch and my colleagues from Fitch who I then worked with at Sapient went to IDEO and went to a place called Essential and they do things like they consider the interface for a gas tank when you go pump gas; or a Xerox machine, and so I feel like also designers who can create interfaces that aren’t just web but are product too, I don’t feel…I feel like if a Graphic Design School did a little more of that, it would also really…set their students apart and taking them out of the web space that they know challenges them to think in a different way, so that’s another sort of thing I’ve been thinking about a little bit.
Gary
No, you’re right. I mean, even if…I know it’s still screen-based, but just IDEO re-did at one point the Bank of America’s ATM experiences.
Heather
Exactly. Or a TV remote or…I mean, now you have the Nest so I suppose it’s all kind of melding but I just think those kind of problems; it’s so easy because, I don’t know, I guess students pump gas too, but when you take them out of the space that they’re so familiar with and challenge them to re-create a product that exists: the interface, the experience, I think those are really good projects for them because they can’t cheat as much. You know, it’s so easy to cheat on these projects: just go look at Pinterest and all that crap, so…I don’t know, I’ll think about that too I guess.
Gary
We’re saddled with a lot!
Heather
We are!
Gary
And so I keep coming back though, but our students are still getting jobs.
Heather
Are you asking if they are or are you saying that they are?
Gary
No, they are; they obviously are, I mean…so, do we really need to change?
Heather
Yeah…
Gary
Or am I just one of those ones that is changing for the sake of changing? I mean, I really have this…I do come with this circular argument.
Heather
I know. Well, you know, when you asked me something in those pre-interview questions and I was thinking: you know, I could go to RISD and maybe this is me being crazy; I could go back and have my same education now and still actually be relatively prepared for a job today because I learned how to conceptualize, think and be creative so that says a lot to me in a lot of ways. Did I have lots of holes? Yeah, I don’t think I learned enough about image making at RISD, they’re very type focused. Did I learn any business skills? No. Did I learn how to strategize for a client? No, but I picked those things up soon enough, so yeah, I was thinking back on that education and thinking well, yeah, something similar still works, so the bones of it seemed good in a lot of ways, so, I don’t know…
Gary
You know…I think…I think it all comes down to a program needs to, and I’m just thinking of this right now; I think a program needs to kind of pick its identify, and I bring this up because I think when I…and nobody ever told me this, but when I approach my curriculum, I am thinking of a student is going to get a job at a design firm. But freelance is now a profession.
Heather
Yeah, it is.
Gary
They would totally…and so I think you kinda have to decide what you want to train, because you can’t train all of it.
Heather
No, you can’t. Yeah, the specialty of each School: are they more arts and conceptual and creative focused? Are they more UI/UX practically focused? Are they theory focused? I don’t know, just depends. DePaul is definitely trying to figure that out being a newer school; they’ve had Graphic Design forever but it moved from Liberal Arts into the School of Computing so yeah, every school, especially newer programs are trying to figure that out, what’s their special…special thing, right? And based on the students that already go there, I mean you have to serve them, the places they desire to work, what they’re capable of and things like that.
Gary
But that’s…you see, that’s what I’m now literally for the first time thought this: do we have to serve them to get a job everywhere? Or is it just like being more upfront in our curriculum saying, this is what we will train you for, whether that’s a design firm, whether that’s to be a freelance professional; whether that’s to be an in-house designer.
Heather
Hmm, that’s interesting.
Gary
And so, contractually upfront if the students know, this is what you are going to be, is that, I don’t have an ethical issue with that: not training them for everything if they know upfront, this is what we can train you in.
Heather
Well, and I think they don’t really know; I mean, especially our students because we don’t require a portfolio; they just know they like computers and maybe they like art. It’s a lot different than when you’re at RISD and the students, most of them have loved art their whole life, and so that was a huge adjustment for me to realize they really…and they didn’t have any idea where they wanted to work. Like I said, they just knew they liked computers; maybe they liked to draw or make graphics or something. It’s interesting, and our students, some of them, a handful of them go to really top firms, but a lot of them are happy as production artists, so we have quite a range in skill and background and where they kind of where they end up; we’re just beginning to get better metrics on that since, again, pretty new in the School of Computing, but it was just interesting to think about.
Gary
Yeah, and I…so…I introduced that client, like you said, because they need business skills and they need to see that process. One thing that I’ve been toying around with and I just don’t have the…one thing I want to do but I just don’t have the bandwidth to do it would be, let’s see…so, in my class I do have this client introduction so they can see what it’s like to interview a client; so they can see what it’s like to present to a client, and that’s the only reason I have it is so they are exposed to that experience.
So, one thing I’ve been wanting to do is get a bunch of local design firms that are willing to have students basically job shadow key projects at key moments; like when they first interview the client. You just show up, don’t participate but just listen. So, by doing that, I don’t have to teach that any more, and so that frees me up to spend I guess more time, critiquing how they made that form. Is it a really nice-looking form?
Heather
That’s interesting. My colleague Leanne runs our internships now and she is trying to do exactly that, job shadowing. And she positioned it as, you want to give back to students but don’t have a ton of time, can’t offer an internship, would you be willing to host a student in a job shadow? And I feel like that is so crazy important; I wish it existed even in K12; we had a thing in sixth grade called Marion Occupational Program and you put down a job you were interested in; you basically shadowed someone for a day.
They couldn’t find me a Graphic Designer; I actually knew I wanted to do that in Sixth Grade, and so I shadowed an Interior Designer and I’m not into interiors really at all, but I remember being in her office and she had like, pages of color swatches and I just was like: I want…this is exactly what I want to do! I saw her drawing and sketching and pasting things together and…so it’s just kind of such a beautiful idea, I won’t know why that doesn’t happen more often because how do you really know what a job is like if you’ve never had a little taste of it? You should have multiple tastes; figure out your favorite ice cream; I don’t know.
Gary
Well, the reason it’s not happening for me is because, who’s going to do it? Who’s going to start it? So I’ve...informally I’ve talked to three or four different design firms and they’re like…yeah, we’d be willing, there’s some non-disclosure agreement issues…
Heather
Yeah, always, right?
Gary
…that we would have to talk through and the stuff sometimes isn’t planned, you know, but the overall premise is, over the course of the summer, assign two or three or however many students a firm thinks they could handle with the knowledge that they’re just sitting; they’re not interacting. Call them in for key meetings, whether it’s the creative pitch to the client or creative pitch just to the Art Director.
Heather
Yeah, totally. We had that…oh go ahead…
Gary
But I mean…OK, so, then that’s me. I have to do it or my colleagues have to do it and it’s like it almost needs to be its own full-time position to somebody to handle that and where’s that money going to come from?
Heather
I know. We were encountering similar issues with this web grant because we have to deal with the NDA and figure out the best days for students to go sit because they’re just observing and taking notes, so it’s sort of in a way it’s like a shadow and a lot of them were like, well our creative meetings are Mondays so that would be a good day. But some of them didn’t know and we were, kinda like, well it doesn’t matter, we’ll just take what we can get, so it’s interesting, but I always think about people love…I don’t want to say competition, but you know how like, this is going to sound ridiculous, but you know how if a store supports a Little League team, they get a plaque and they get a picture of the team.
I feel like if the company got some kind of certificate or award or something that said thank you from…AIGA does that, because I’ve got a thing that said, thanks for being a mentor. And it sounds stupid but those little things you can hang in your office that remind you that you were actually doing something really good and then once one company does it and you give them some…U-Maryland sponsored, then another company would be like…oh yeah, we want to do that too, so there’s got to be a method to get these firms on board with, you know, wanting to do it.
Gary
Oh no, I mean, at least for me personally, all the ones…the design firms are totally willing to do it, just to iron out some of the logistical questions. It’s me, matching up students to firms and being the one that…
Heather
Right, it should be everybody needs a Director of Internship and not a Faculty member who’s already tapped out.
Gary
Yes, exactly. You know what…
Heather
In fact, that’s like the most important role at a school right now with the job market and everything: someone who really knows how to do that. I know, what were you going to say…you know what, what?
Gary
No, I actually I think I’m going to go talk to our internship people, because we do have, for the University and say, I want to set…this is what I think would benefit students: firms are on board. Can you be the conduit for it if I send you the…I do the initial poking of the firm and can they iron out…yeah, I’m gonna go do that.
Heather
I wonder too if it could be…I mean, this gets more complicated; this is like a long-term idea. But if you had, it’s some kind of a class and the student has to actually sit and observe at three companies, like an in-house, a small, a big and they have to do a writing piece about it or something. Or some kind of analysis. I mean, can you imagine how valuable that would be for them, to actually…yeah
Gary
Yeah, I would but…students are…bad about…maybe it’s just where I’m at now. But I’ll give you an example of…so, one, there’s this company called Baltimore in a Box. What they do is they take all of the iconic things that are made in Baltimore and put them in a box, a gift box that can be sent out.
Heather
Oh yeah. Providence does that too; I’ve seen that kinda thing, sure.
Gary
And so that was the website that we were in theory re-designing and the client came in and talked about it and it was like, I said, well instead of having the client come here, let’s go to the store and do the interview. Some of the students couldn’t get there. And it’s like…but…and I run into that all the time…oh, can’t get there.
Heather
Yeah, they almost don’t understand…I don’t know if it’s generational, like they don’t have the same go-getter-ness or they don’t understand how important it is. I feel that all the time too, and it’s not because of DePaul; I felt it at RISD to, where it was just like…not a…I have a million thoughts on that kind of thing. But just…I mean, you look at K through 12, the parents are planning all their kids’ stuff so the kids don’t know how to even…
Gary
No; it stems from that. It stems from K through 12 because my wife teaches Third Grade and she’s taught other grades and it is a direct result of no child left behind, standardized testing, teaching to the test.
Heather
Over-scheduled kids who don’t even just play and yeah, I mean, that’s like a whole other podcast, right? I know, yeah, I feel it and so then it’s the whole thing, do you push for it anyway or do you adapt, do you accept that this is just how it is now and I don’t know; I don’t know the answer to that either.
Gary
No, but it’s a struggle to get students to go to things.
Heather
Yeah, it really is.
Gary
Off campus. Some of it legitimate because they just don’t have transportation, so then you have to plan for transportation and it’s like…forget it, I’m just not even going to bother.
Heather
I know; yep, just not even going to bother. Because you put all this effort in and then it’s like, well, for what? Yeah. I know, I feel all of that too, it’s super-hard.
Gary
All right, so just seeing where we’re at on time, I’m just going to ask one more question before I let you go and so this is a question that I’m…a standardized new question I’m asking each and every guest. So, what’s one piece of advice you would like to give design educators to better prepare students for life post-graduation?
Heather
Oh, I read that question wrong! When I read it I thought it was advice I was giving to students. It’s advice I’m giving to educators!
Gary
Educators, yeah!
Heather
Oh damn!
Gary
And put on your business hat. I mean, you ran a firm for how many years?
Heather
Right.
Gary
I would say, do it from that…unless you got something insightful that came from your teaching experiences.
Heather
Oh my God, I feel totally stumped! I was just my advice for students was that you should…your job is long and hard and you should make sure you’re doing something that you love, you know, I mean that’s like the most obvious advice but nobody ever takes it. So, you know, I guess the advice for educators is the one I feel sort of across the board in a way is you can always challenge the way things are and re-think them, whether it’s things like we were talking about our conference: why do you have to speak at a podium?
I don’t really lecture in my classes: they’re conversational, right? So I just think if your gut feels like something doesn’t feel right and the students aren’t learning or engaging then there’s another way to maybe think about doing it. So I tend to have…I like to think I have an open mind in the teaching space because I’ve been at so many different places, so yeah, there it is.
Gary
No, I kinda actually agree with that because I think we do things as educators…I think just human nature. For example, for the longest time, I was grading the way that somebody showed me who I…in Grad School I was proctoring a class so I was working with the instructor and I used her grading method for when I was teaching there and it wasn’t ’til much later on where I was like…wait a minute…
Heather
I don’t have to do it this way. Yeah! Totally!
Gary
This is right for her…this doesn’t mean it’s right for me and it definitely doesn’t mean it’s right for my…giving an A on a project that is like simply did you do it or did you not do it was…weird. And so yeah, I think we tend to do that, it’s just we use the systems we know and never stop to think…is this appropriate?
Heather
Yeah, it’s like…that term, it’s mindfulness!
Gary
Yeah, exactly. All right, so before I let you go, is there anything that you’re working on that you want to share or promote or talk about or anything like that?
Heather
Just I’m writing a Design Futures class for Spring and that kind of carries from my MFA thesis from October so I’m just super-excited about that. It’ll be…yeah, it’s going to be good. It’s probably the class I’m most excited to teach, so I think it’s going to do a lot of the things we talked about, like how might you speculate the design of a future gas…when you’re pumping gas? What is that experience like? What are the ethical underlying things you need to think about, what are the business things? So it’s going to be weird sci-fi speculative but also have kind of an ethical business take as well. At least in my mind. I’m still writing the syllabus but I think it’ll be good.
Gary
Can you give us a little hint of what that’s about? Design Futures?
Heather
Well, I mean…I don’t know if you’ve read a lot; Speculative Futures or Design Futures or Critical Design is kind of happening; you’re hearing more about it right now. In my thesis that I finished, it did a lot with design fiction so I speculated all kinds of various futures based on automation, 3D fabrication, augmented reality, so I made these fictional stories but with each story I had a lot of footnotes that showed the research and the scholarship that supported how these things were evolving and so a thesis…how do you even know how you ended up?
I don’t know how that ended up being my thesis, but I loved doing it and then realized it was a class that I wanted to teach in some form or another and of course it’s being taught. One of our colleagues has taught it at UCLA and somewhere else; Carnegie Mellon teaches it so I’m kind of figuring out how I will teach it and how I’ll teach it for our students, but the thing I really like about it is because these products or these futures don’t exist, it allows students to be really creative and it forces them to think about the future implications of the products that they’re making and also you can tie in things like business, users and things like that as well, so I have a lot of hopes for the class but the first time you teach something it’s a little bit of an experiment, so…we’ll kinda see how it goes.
And in a way, I don’t want to read too many syllabi that exist; there aren’t very many yet, because I think there’s a beauty in kinda not knowing too much because I’ll come up with my own way of doing it, so I’m…yeah, I’m kind of at that point of just seeing how it evolves, but I’ll let you know. I’m excited about it.