Beyond disicplines: Can design approaches be used to develop education for jobs that don’t yet exist?

In 2001, Richard Buchanan suggested that design could become a required area of study for non-design students: "Design is the bridge between theory and the way we actually live our lives, we need to spend more time teaching non-designers design knowledge." [1] At a time when the purpose of universities is increasingly being questioned, modes of study disrupted, Higher Education increasingly marketised and many employers declaring a degree no longer a prerequisite for hiring, can universities continue to conform to old constructs of discipline, or are we entering a new era where skill, competency and attitude play a more significant role? The skills employers tend to value map onto those that Art and Design graduates tend to have. This being the case, can the educational approaches used in design play a more diverse role in preparing graduates outside design disciplines? The future role of universities, what and how they teach, is a truly complex, networked problem. In this paper the authors reveal the design, and delivery of a pilot study in which Design Thinking approaches were adopted in order to explore this wicked problem with a cohort of postgraduate students from diverse disciplinary, cultural and educational backgrounds. The paper presents an evaluation of the pilot in order to inform future research with other diverse student groups. It also reveals the educational themes and approaches that the pilot participants identified.