Ask The UXperts: Simon Pemberton - The best way to predict the future is to create it

all right hello and welcome this is the latest on our UX mastery series of live Kendall needs one pork and I'm joined today by Simon Pemberton will be discussing the future of design education and the part that we won't have to play in it and we plan on sharing this session today with Marissa and Mills but unfortunately Marissa has been waylaid by some unexpected childcare Edmund and I also need to apologize for the weather here in New Zealand quite likely to see an amazing thunder and lightning display behind me very shortly fingers crossed all right before we start I'll just quickly apologize to those of you that tried to join us for this efficient a couple of weeks ago you know a technical difficulty we were unable to go live at that time I'm so yeah really sorry for anyone that had to reshoot your learning thanks for your patience quick housekeeping please keep yourselves muted and ask questions at any time via the chat sidebar you can open the chat sidebar by clicking the chat icon at the bottom of your screen and time permitting we may invite you to ask a question on video this is obviously absolutely optional Luke will hit you up via direct message it's a chicken as to whether you're comfortable doing it if you're not I can ask any behalf but yeah please shoot three questions as soon as they arise near check okay I'd like to start by formally

introducing Simon and then I'm gonna throw up and to Simon just at the scene and give us a little bit of context around the subject of today's session before we throw it over to you for Christians so let's talk about Simon so many has a nefarious experience in both design and advertising industries and his combined experience and suitable creation development and implementation of brand identities and cultures and as experience as the head of school at for leading design schools brings together a unique blend of creative and management skills within a successful educational environment Simon is also published author and a wide range of design magazines and recently published on the shoulders of giants which is a book and video documentary featuring interviews from 13 of Australia's leading designers Simon's joining me today is one thing and fish industry which is the collaboration is collaborative effort of three individuals who are passionate about people design and learning and the mission is to create an environment that's committed to building a culture of strong dynamic and effective design education and Australia so Simon welcome thank you very much for joining us today and yeah I'd love to get a bit of an overview on your thoughts around design

education and with why it is that we're all responsible what we can do I think the main thing that I would like us all to talk about is I'll use the word probably community more than I should but what we can do as an industry a community to support design education I think that's I mean it's a truism but it's um I don't think it's given enough attention and there's a lot of detail around that because clearly students are our future and clearly students want to be that they want their future to be what we do and I think underpinning some of the issues I hope we talk about today is the fact that even starting at high school and I think we should include high school students very definitely not just test for your level but post-secondary level whatever whichever way Larry Burton students high school because they are beginning to think about their careers but they're being taught by people who I'm sure a very talented very committees very smart took all the right boxes of course but who may not either have the time or who may not have the experience to understand the industry the design industries that students are thinking they might want to go into and I think as an industry there's a lot we can do to support those teachers and I think there's a lot we should be doing and to a lesser extent but it - to some extent the same happens at tertiary level and I've been heavily involved in level design education for another years now and all tertiary level high design schools are required to have industry engagement as part of their accreditation and they all do to be honest with varying degrees of success varying degrees of depth and also varying degrees of responding to any feedback they may get from industry actually quite often not their fault because they have to have industry engagement to keep their accreditation but they also have to follow very stringent educational guidelines in terms of particularly their open degree based programs in terms of what they deliver to their students and there's often a conflict perhaps in terms of times much anything else between teaching students what they think they should know from the industry but also to get them through their degree and pass all that kind of academic stuff is complex so given those two environments the high schools and the tertiary level schools I think there's a lot we could as an industry we could and should do to support the students and the students as well as the teachers as well a big diversion and that can only lead to better quality graduates which a better quality industry seems to me to be a bit of a no-brainer and as far as really doing this helps this improve well again it's by us an industry being involved but it's going through the curriculum content I think I know there's been various discussions about the Phil cleavers quote they didn't teach you and Design School written making sure that see you always don't need to teach design and this is a bit controversial but it's and it's not quite right but if successful designer they already having an innate creative talent probably or certainly they also have the will to want to be a great designer well they don't have all the other stuff designers of business design and the people skills and that's a huge conversation right there but in terms of UX UI all that staff they don't necessarily will specially certain and even still at tertiary level school they don't have the skills or experience to understand designing for them they're designing for a client base they just really have no direction they're come from school they're excited about the idea of doing something but they don't really know what something is or what it involves and disconnect between the teaching of topics or subjects themselves and kind of directing people as to where they go as they mix how do you think um anything that we can maybe gonna confront that issue it's it seems insurmountable in some ways he's changing so fast and in so many ways that when so I think just giving them the skills to be able to do to know where they're going but or to know the complexities of the environment that exists out there yeah I think probably important support them if they have ideas about what they're interested in and areas of interest we can the

education process if it starts at high school and goes right through we're talking about years and so this idea of directing I mean for example it was a toy ten years ago yeah so this idea of saying well so there's things we're gonna miss if we try and be too prescriptive I think is what I'm trying to say so understood so trying to keep keep open-minded and inspirational the kids were fine the students were fine yeah I agree with you so I guess one of the issues of easly is that especially from our high school if we talking about a high school as a starting point then designers 1sp and it is obviously just so many other vocations we're focusing on design how might this specifically affect people that are designing digital products or other kinds of attentional areas or vacations if I've understood the question properly pork I think in terms of digital products it's but people listening will certainly understand this is all fundamental UX stuff so really understanding who's on the other side of the screen it's people skills it's being emotionally of course it's about the aesthetics but aesthetics has to be driven by consumer responses not by pure aesthetics it's really creating an education complex and that applies to us as much architecture all right another question here and given the state of the industry what's the potential that we should be growing in design students what's

the best what does a design student at the pinnacle of success look like for us what do we want these people to be coming to us what state do you then you know the top two or three percent of students that graduate of course you can just fade it in them they just you know that they're itching to go you can really feel that and the other one of course is the ability to get your head down energy and so we've established obviously that this problem does exist it's your mission to change it but is there a more helpful way that we could reframe the problem and the complicating issues you know to cut brain try and get this message a little bit more widespread community which includes and focuses on creative edge of the problems or the issues about teaching design and I think if we look at it from that perspective we've got more chance of success that has to be many teachers the teachers I know and I know quite a lot of them I know if we're an industry go to them right and so obviously there's this she starts at a high school level or at a school level and are you seeing that it's kind of permeating through into it institution airy education as well I guess I ask because you know lots of SP lot lots of educating providers that are specifically providing design education and you know it's a bit of a scary thought if they're not doing that one thing very well a high school issue or is it much wider than there from those from that research to knowledge and I think that's my knowledge of high school teachers in the design space is more limited the student wants to build a website right so some people doing some good things in the space what done by right by the various players I've got a couple of examples noted um but I'm interested might want to your own states with this design is a job and do your design student I'm Phil cleaver from Peter Brown George Murray from our community I used a link as much as the slack channel that's currently kind of challenging these ideas yeah wondered if you had some other examples of people are doing the things or examples that we follow that he commits his time and energies to creating a lot of it to be honest we probably know about and probably instinctively understand but it's as like as is often the case in these instances good to be reminded good to use someone kind of like so the reason I'm saying no is that as we said at the beginning none of these people as far as I'm aware and if there's someone listening is actually doing you know what's missing what's not missing strengths and weaknesses and but it's the doing part coming from a certain industry and I think that's the missing right and that's what you're doing it in history search and the conversations that we've had with our industry connections yeah it would be interesting to hear some of your business strategies because I mentioned that there are people listening to how people that will listen to this recording in the future there that I'm just going he'll you know I kind of pursue this I mean this this is an issue but you know what can we do what can I do um what does an initiative look like and he'll be people obviously our audience is not just Australian based so you know what kinds of things can other people do well I think the things that we're talking about now I think work out how big a chunk we prepared to bite off and then go for it so for example if you have a local arts court or a local high school or your students again in high school and if you're a practicing creative you engage with the teachers certainly and just offer support and just find out what they're you know what keeps them awake at night that's a cliche question but also if they can try and talk to the students and the way that I've approached that is to say to the teachers that you would love to talk to students about their for whatever comes out of that you're comfortable sharing with the teachers so that they can practice more like it's because people would come out reasonably defensive if you went into the strategy of how you guys are creating this issue for us yeah but driving us forward is the fact that we want better graduate this is completely non-political and if the teacher can if we can talk to them enough to understand that you know this is absolutely and become community yeah and we can ask the questions the tissues frankly can't because the students if a teacher asks questions the students as we will want to tell the teachers to a large extent what they think the teachers want to hear yeah I've got a great question again from Julia Marie who Johnny is a member of value its mastery community and as I mentioned and Shinyoung is a lot of experience with different design options that are out there you know especially online learning and so we took after high school and she's asking because of the wide range of options she helps me the community these are these wide range of options what are your thoughts on licensing designers on some kind of regulation or some kind of she's talking about creating some kind of I guess

overarching qualification indicator that's correct just like architecture or something like that yeah are just a license or body you know like you have for architecture and you have to take continuing education credits to keep your license things like that I mean I have been the national present for and the state president for New South Wales and it used to come out quite often at that level to within AG day the DIA I know do something as well which is I'd personally think it's a good idea because if nothing else it speaks the idea of currency in practice it's absolutely central in architecture is a bit building falls down people are going to die so I think it's a complex issue but in principle I can get a great idea but if it were to move forward I think education and supporting education as you all understood by now that's my agenda must be part of it so I don't want to use the expression of giving back but it's that principle of being involved great answer for you Julia yeah I just wanted an opinion I know it's a very divisive topic the other one that is this whole notion of work experience we're getting off topic a bit perhaps let's do it I'm so not a fan of students having to do work experience and again a lot of people don't agree including a lot of students and interesting a lot of their parents I understand the notion that going to studio for two weeks or two months or anything in between might give you some insights into what's going on in the industry and for those students so really hanging out to do it then fair enough but as far as they know 98% of the time is unpaid but also I think equally 98% of the time it's probably a complete waste of time because you're never going to become a long-term member of that environment you're in the people in that environment know that so they're never going to take you all that seriously they're going to thank you if you're a nice person they're going to enjoy having you there they're going to love the coffee as you go and get for them but the actual learnings I think and if you do work on any projects which and these are not projects they're going to really be necessarily very helpful so I think it comes with some very mixed blessings from professional point of view two weeks for two months I think there's an awful lot that a student can do I'd love to hear what some of those things might be I'm curious I speaking to the work experience I agree with you especially around the unpaid aspect but I also think that there is a big part to work experience which is kind of taking away the pipe dream I'm gonna be an architect I'm going to be a designer I'm gonna be this or that and hey this is what it actually looks like to do a week in the life of you're not going to change the world next week you're going to do a lot of little shitty things and so I think that can add some value but I'm more interested and here are your ideas around what would be a better way to utilize that time for our students work on your student projects in more depth you're never going to be a student again you're never going to have these opportunities again so absolutely max them out but probably more usefully in the context of what you're asking about is the schools to think about and I mean high school and tertiary dental schools to think about a better way of insisting that their students if that's what they want to do in system for their students have a work experience environment so know that might be organizing a period it could be a month it could be two or three months once the students have graduated they may be you know it could either be free or a small program the students can then do on their way into the industry once they finish I think thought through properly that has a lot of Merit because the students can stop then thinking about being a student and start focusing on about start focusing on their future so but within the learning environment within a a two or three or four or five year context in high school go on trips to see studios listen to all the industry people who are coming in and listen to their stories but do you need to go into an expensively faded out opened an office and see rows of computers to really with an understanding of the business so do we have to go to the commercial enterprise and to understand what that means and the responsibilities that brings both in terms of running a business but in terms of it's imperative and most design schools tend not to focus on that nearly enough and I think a lot of those would argue that you know that's something that students will need to learn once they graduate trying to teach students to be the best designers there can be but that's slightly shallow promised because Bingham went big one of the best designers and then four or five clients so Julia I live in San Francisco California and this is a believe me well well it's about Mesa California and now I'm will hire you without examples of real work so coming back to that portfolio but not a contract portfolio a portfolio of stuff that you've done and for Julia and it's even university graduates so how as an industry can we be proactive and kind of breaking that cycle and we're not giving you a job because you've got no experience but we're not giving you experience because we won't give you a job how do you think that we can have to commit yeah sorry I live in a bubble again for fear of standing like this that record I think we as a community should go into certainly tertiary level in terms of portfolios perhaps I'm high school level as well and help students create opportunities to do live projects it can't be that hard and it can be projects that we worked on and that will support the teachers as well so again it takes some managing but we all have loads of work experience loads of project loads of briefs that we can do that we can and as part of that help students understand what they want to do get in there and really talk to your local school your local museum or hand off that project that you don't have time to do yourselves to a student that that's got some time to run with it and there were so many opportunities out there to do the work and I often hear pushback from people that don't want to go and approach organizations got it because this it's also a big part of being you're gonna have to start learning to do that kind of stuff at some point it's not all about designing so yeah I encourage everybody to do what they can to find real-world examples I've done this a few times for students because the people who run these fairly illiterate in terms of design probably just because that's not their background so they usually learn from the process and as a result really enjoy the process which is really uplifting for the students to you know just the fact that students would even want to spend some time thinking about doing some design work the train museum kind of you know they face is amazing and then when they saw the standard at work I've got a question from Rick I might need to my own spit under some strain it work experience can indeed be problematic and which we've already discussed obviously he's saying it's probably better for schools to teach you its design which is kind of I guess would it be what he was saying but that he's saying the problem is what kind what do we learn art we learn programming doing their business what how do we capture like that and to a valuable topic that does take it does take a student to something just some available is an XP I have this it's a good question so thank you as well and I think the answer I think I want to give is probably not going to be that useful I think it's going to be a bit of a pipe dream but in a perfect world what I would like to see us doing is going to us first of all but then also what areas they interested in and then try and support them rather than be prescriptive about well this is what you have to do are you interested in medicine are interested in science I mean I don't know what the questions are even but to ask the students because if we go in feeling prescriptive about it or with the particular mindset we run the risk of the students engaged because they don't particularly interested in what we're talking about or missing an opportunity back to the drone pilots you know if we went in saying okay we want to teach you these skills but there's kids sitting there about the class thinking I love flying drawings but if we hadn't talked to him or asked him about that you know he would have missed the opportunity with our support to become a drone pilot yeah right I think trying to go in and with questions before we go in with answers it's idealistic but I think if we can try and do that then it's going to be more constructive actually for everybody yeah great um I guess along the same lines from Rick we know that lots of there lots of courses focus on tools or processes and is that a helpful approach in your opinion and we how do we know which process which to which set of tools which approach is the right one for us again it's the right question to be asking but I think my answer would be not to worry so much about what software's or what technical skills to teach we have to do some of that students have to learn some of that the higher levels of thinking perhaps rather than the pragmatic skills so creative thinking design thinking lateral thinking different ways of approaching how you can solve particular communications or design issues and again with UX almost in particular really work experience the CX thing but do it from a customer's perspective so from the other side of the screen not from your you can learn a particular software you know those are the planet that learn QuarkXPress 100 years ago and I'm sure now a really good in InDesign so it's not and those things are reasonably easy to learn reasonably quickly as well whereas some of the overarching strategies and frameworks take a lot more time and a different focus so what we tend to see in our community is a lot of people asking questions about bootcamps they've come out of high school well kind of tangentially related degree and they decided they want to get into a design role and so you know they're kind of sideswiped by these massively expensive boot camps which pretend to be all things to all people do you have any thoughts about that as the kind middle ground between high school and industry is they had the right approach I know it's a difficult question but you know this the one that I'm for we confronted with the moist at the moment some people and loved it and others will get same one and get actually nothing from it I think the secret to being to having any success is have a look at the outcomes the bootcamp is offering and be selfish about what you want out of it and make sure especially above that where you're going to end up listening as well I think one of the things that one of the perceived benefits these fishy and new it's through camps is projects that you come out with but what you learn and I are seeing more and more now is that employers aren't even looking at these booklets all these projects because instruments they've all got the same project and so it's become surgeon your size but that it's lost its value all together and these people have paid thousands of dollars for this waste of great work and I think that's really important if that's one of the outcomes when you're doing a research walk away saving money I would suggest yeah that sort of thing was happening at and we had you know and I think the other two companies that allows this the conversation that we're having right now that includes stages I'd be fascinated

to know if there's any design teachers in the audience today I would guess they're probably aren't maybe some of some people today I've done some teaching or do some part-time teaching but you know let's really go and embrace the teaching community and our friends and as you know graduates and have these conversations it will become much easier much easier in so far these kind of polarized aspects of Education and industry are really quite you know disparate and rather than kind of part of the same spectrum where we're always learning it's not right I've done my education and now I am a professional you know maybe we need to kind of reconsider what that spectrum looks like and think about education is a continuing journey through the workforce sports industry the coaches and the managers the teachers are there all the way through they are part of that community and so what is what as an industry what can we do to make hiring managers more open to who they hire kind of going back to that I'm not going to look at boot camp graduates because they would have the same project so I'm not going to look at people that haven't done this I haven't done that or have a good experience what do you think we can do to kind of boy that passed a little bit and soften those boundaries well this goes to entry that coming through I think within existing communities nice again Julia called Christians Julia oh you want me to say education or to teaching what are your thoughts on it right I also lots of seriously lovely people who are very talented creatives scarily bad in the classroom not their fault you can either relate to the students or you can make sure I just said the wrong thing the students aren't electing you or they don't it's not got nothing to do with you as we all did when we were 15 formed opinions about who we thought we can learn from and respect in a happy and that's the way it is and they could and is cruel and acknowledgeable and as open as they wanted but you know switch off so that's a trial and error thing you just have to be honest about it I've had to let lots of teachers guide with me so I designed it so I said I'd love to do teaching it's really friends of ours and friends of mine but you just say I'm sorry but it's talented as you are in academics and trained teachers yeah generally probably pretty good because they know how to teach but they're the people that need our help because then you can help them luckily quite a lot of Industry people who want the operative guarantees of course but a lot of the map are good and students relate to them so I don't think we should put pressure on ourselves to suddenly all of us become teachers I think the pressure should be for all of us to help the teachers and then it leads into from the check is asking what criteria to put my opinion about for me a community can you maybe we'll ask Moses for some clarification on that and I'll post the state's Christian too in the meantime because I can't Simon its Moses from New Zealand Simon the criteria you're using or your opinion on that teachers with industry experience versus academics at the moment in New Zealand the teachers are striking because they're not hitting their wages on par with a local it's our industry but again that's not the question so what criteria do you use to form or as a basis for your opinion that you just offer my opinion practitioners sometimes being problematic as a teacher or you want to make sure I've understood your question well you're sort of often opinion with teachers and the industry experience versus academics so they teachers with experience and with experience how do

you compare them both the academics and the teachers with industry experience what criteria do you use to make sure opinion on both I don't think making a straight comparison is actually that useful Moses because they're coming into the process with different experiences different backgrounds and different things they can offer the students I think so it's a hard one but I think the right to ask for more respect about what's being done as a teacher is absolutely correct and I think government's the world over I think they kind of do but meanwhile they've got raised to grade and hospitals to be bullets it's a hard one but I don't think you can make a straight comparison so I think the focus is probably on people who are actual teachers and less brokers and Industry people coming in to support and what they're trying to starting to approach designers sometimes no community sometimes outside sorry it's good excited cuz the sun's come in and did what advice do you have to those people that just like to take this offer up and therefore start to become our educators arguably good ones and what advice can you give them about how they start to kind of challenge these issues that we're seeing what advice can we give to people their new teachers to kind of break down some of these barriers I think the question I've got here says yes Pacific advice about yeah so that aside and you can't blame them for that no that's okay I'm I have education running through my veins so I have mixed feelings about how I feel about that but again I certainly understand their position so I think you know just be clear about what you're trying to do as a teacher and exactly what it is you're teaching and is it just more of the same or is it something actually useful that students can really relate to and also ask yourself as you're putting your content together if you were to present this to a panel of industry board members what kind of review would they give you would it be one that says okay this is useful I think you can go through that process yourself and come out the other side feeling as though you're onto something then yeah some teachers may do it GA but I suspect not many do or do properly follow up with the students and make sure you get the feedback just to make sure that what they wanted cool awesome and I guess so Jordan is just a brilliant example of somebody that that's come from industry and taking this educated career path and I strongly agree so she chose there as a third option with once you kind of get to that yeah point in your career where you becoming a manager and you look at what you need skip begin you know I think that it's a strong approach from us if we start to encourage people to consider educators and or teachers as a third career path and not something that often enough I often give advice to people who are sort of stuck it there what should I do now I'm not I'm intermediate oh I'm senior and I kind of want to veer down a particular path and education becoming an educator isn't one that's up and raised but and therefore we just don't have enough I'm not strong to cater so yeah encourage people to consider that as an option debts as hands know people if not more valuable than a manager or a team leader or a principal of an agency the old adage of those that can do and those that can't teach unfortunately still kind of out there a little bit and also harder and harder these days is a lot of I don't know what it's like in the states Judy but certainly in Australia I don't know what it's like in New Zealand either but you and as a teacher you are now required to have minimum level qualifications in a number of area in if you're teaching it in and a higher education you have to have within theory you certainly have to have a degree ideally you have at least a master's and not many graphic designers yet well it's changing but have those levels of qualification and so that can make it more complicated so back to my old back on my old soapbox I think yes by all means do that if that's what you want to do can find an environment where you can do it but equally what's support the teachers and make our contribution that way not necessarily yep little advice right we've reached the top of the hour so I guess I will ask you each what key takeaway you want to leave people with community is a nice challenge I try not to I think keep this conversation going keep thinking about what we can all do in our industries to support education and talking is always good you know just keep the conversations talk to teachers talk to students talk to parents of students so the more we learn now the better equipped would be as we do start moving in to engage students so I think anything and everything we can do to start off step one learn from the students what do they actually want rather than a sterling and what we think they want to know we're onto something here as an industry you know we I think we're kind of waking out to this could be really fun and certainly really valuable and not a difficult way for us to build good our industry's future it's not going to be hugely time-consuming it's talking and working with staff we already know about we're talking and working with a buncha students who want to join us so they already love us they're interested and know what's to lose this can only be a good experience thank you so much for your time today Simon I've really enjoyed the conversation I carriage anyone that's listening what lessons in the future that wants to continue this conversation to either jump over to our forums community uux mastery calm or contact us you'll find your flight assignment at industry fish calm ok yeah we're the questions I'm happy to field them and put them through to Simon but otherwise you know to continue the conversation and figure out how we can push through some strong ideas here so yeah thank you very much Julie no Moses and your awesome questions yeah alright buddy thank you