Design Competencies Futures. How do we REDO Design Education?

The REDO biannual Cumulus 2017 conference in Kolding describes “how designers struggle on many levels to gain influence on the decision-making processes” and that we need to “rethink design-doing.” In our professional and didactic experience, designers not always have the language or terminology to convey the depth, value or validity of ‘design-doing’ contributions to these decision-making processes. This raises the question whether design education can do a better job in providing language that can help design students articulate what makes ‘design doing’ so special and relevant. In order to better articulate the value, depth and validity of ‘design doing’ we have developed a framework of design competencies that maybe helpful to other design educators to define, organize and measure the value of ‘design doing’, and help future design practitioners to better understand and communicate the value of what they have learned.