A new year tends to bring time for reflection…reflection on a year that has just past, on life, accomplishments and failures, dreams and goals yet to be achieved. Some of those goals are centered on our careers – what we’d like to accomplish in the next year and beyond, positive changes we’d like to make in our daily work, and the like.
Depending on whom you ask, this “New Year” exercise can be anything from helpful to a waste of time. However, it cannot be disputed that taking time to put even a minimal amount of bigger-picture reflection into each year (at the very least) can only benefit the reflector. It’s on this note, we bring to you the results of the IIDA’s Educators Roundtable held in October 2017, a report titled, “The State of Interior Design Education: Wellness. Well-Being. Diversity. Social Responsibility.”
The roundtable, hosted by the IIDA and Milliken, gathered together emerging and experienced design professionals, educators and students for a thought-provoking discussion that puts into perspective the things the architecture and design fields are grappling with in recruiting and properly developing talent.
To read the full roundtable report, visit the IIDA website; it’s a good read! Below, we present a synopsis.
As a starting point, the roundtable considered the question: “Have entry-level practitioners been properly educated for today’s workplace – and do those novices themselves feel adequately prepped?”
There’s a gap between what recent grads and upper-level practitioners who recruit, hire, mentor and manage young designers, are experiencing.
“By all accounts, new hires are much better prepared for the workplace than were their predecessors. ‘Over the last five years, the skill set has gone up,’ said IIDA Global Chair of Student Experience, Primo Orpilla, FIIDA, principal and co-founder, Studio O+A, and visiting professor, University of Texas at Austin. ‘Graduates are able to hit the ground running right when they walk in our door.’ Josie Briggs, IIDA, LEED AP ID+C, principal interior designer, NBBJ, concurred: ‘The skill level is there; it’s amazing.’ Many designers credited this competence to new CIDA standards and a better dialogue between educators and practitioners.”
“Young designers themselves, however, painted a more complicated picture,” citing a pressure-filled sink-or-swim environment with little guidance from above.
The prevailing “figure it out yourself” attitude can be attributed to the higher-ups’ lack of bandwidth to mentor and handhold. There’s also no time for an ease-in period during which neophytes can observe or shadow superiors. “We have such a talent gap at the mid-level that we have to throw [rookies] right into large projects: ‘Here’s this massive amount of work—and you are responsible for it,’” said Briggs. Mentoring happens at the senior level, but not lower down the rung. “I’ve heard that firms are doing a great job onboarding for culture, but not for the practice of design,” said Durst. “Young designers are forced to identify and reach out to mentors very quickly.”
“Time-strapped practitioners must prioritize: What is most important for them to teach novices, and what can entry-level designers effectively learn on their own?
“It can also take time for recent graduates to truly understand how their individual actions affect an entire project… Perspective and a sense of the big picture are important. ‘Designers often focus on one area, but we need people at our firm and in the profession who can shift scales and span project types,’ said Ms. Briggs.”
The roundtable identified three pivotal issues driving the design profession right now – the key things design firms are working intensely to offer their clients: wellness and wellbeing, diversity, and social responsibility.
>Wellness & Wellbeing
“Are students being taught everything they need to know in order to create spaces that enhance well-being and meaningfully converse with clients about the nuances of the topic?” Pamela K. Evans, Ph.D., IIDA, FIDEC, LEED AP, director of the interior design program within the College of Architecture and Environmental Design at Kent State University, recently completed her tenure as board chair of the Council for Interior Design Accreditation (CIDA) and admits well-being ‘has been hard to define within what we do.’…A complicating factor is that research on the direct link between wellness and the built environment is evolving – and something of an imperfect science. We don’t yet have the technological tools to answer many key questions regarding causality, nor the means to measure the impact of certain environmental and behavioral factors.”
But organizations like the Council for Interior Design Accreditation (CIDA) and Delos Labs/Well Living Lab and many more are creating more pinpointed research opportunities that show the correlation between wellbeing and interior design/architecture more clearly.
>Diversity
“Equity is important for business, for innovation, and for humanity. Attaining diversity is, however, complicated and requires a holistic, concerted, and dogged approach from educators, practitioners, and industry partners. Achieving diversity of all stripes (racial, economic, gender, etc.) takes work, resources, and intentionality…Many roundtable participants described themselves as ‘the first’ or ‘the only.’…Recruiting such ‘firsts’ – to the field, to design school, and to our firms – is a necessity and a challenge. Students who are first in their family to attend college are not often steered toward interior design as a major, or even art/design school in the first place; in fact, they are likely to be actively dissuaded from design in favor of law, medicine, or another career believed to be safer and more lucrative.”
And, “a recent Gallup poll discovered students get advice about college and majors primarily through family and friends – not guidance counselors…The industry needs to do a better job of explaining what it is one can do with a design degree in hand, the career options available to design graduates, and the viability of the profession. Design still suffers from an image problem.”
‘Looking across the entire employee lifecycle is what we aspire to,’ said Craig Haydamack, Senior Vice President of HR at Milliken.
“Protected categories are just the first layer; ‘invisible’ disabilities like mental illness are the next frontier. To be truly and sustainably diverse requires looking at everything from recruitment and hiring practices to mentorship and board membership.
‘If you don’t have a diverse interview team, you will not make balanced decisions and evaluate everyone appropriately,’ said Mr. Haydamack.”
>Social Responsibility
“Moral fortitude and high-mindedness are attributes that millennials, in particular, prize – and look for in a potential employer. Companies keen on recruiting this generation need to flaunt (and perhaps bolster) their corporate values, said Haydamack…By extension, design firms and manufacturers are shoring up their ethical frameworks with an eye toward both recruitment and the bottom line: Many clients prefer to retain a design firm whose values align with their own.”
With all of these considerations in mind, the roundtable proposed the following challenge: How can we futureproof the profession by nurturing future professionals?
“What challenges do we face in attaining these goals, given the current state of education, the prevalent traits and attitudes of young Gen Z and Millennial practitioners, and the evolving project implementation processes?”
- Explain the profession better
The Obstacle: We do a subpar job of selling our profession.
The Opportunity: Framing the profession better will draw a more diverse audience to the industry – and ensure better valuation of our services.
- Use accessible language
The Obstacle: Pretentious design-speak alienates a lot of people – including potential practitioners and clients.
The Opportunity: Talking about our work in more accessible language helps us connect with the world and leads to more human-centered design.
- Be proactive about recruiting from new places
The Obstacle: It’s hard to boost diversity when we reach out to the same schools and communities over and over.
The Opportunity: Reaching out to audiences who tend to be underexposed to design will draw new people to the field and help us create designs that ultimately connect with more people.
- Work with (rather than rail against) the Gen Z mindset
The Obstacle: Millennials and gen zs aren’t good with the “gray area.” They grew up with a clear path to success – and expect the same on the job.
The Opportunity: Take advantage of their need for validation, approval, and a transparent, clearly defined route to success.
- Be tech-flexible
The Obstacle: It’s hard for schools to train students to be tech proficient when the software of choice changes every few years.
The Opportunity: Teaching the core skills – spatial imaging, 2d-to-3d conversion – that the technology is shortcutting will create better practitioners and ensure our role is valued.
- Embrace soft skills
The Obstacle: It’s hard to teach emotional intelligence and people skills.
The Opportunity: Those attributes are vital to the health and longevity of the profession.
