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Co.Design spoke to 16 design leaders and thinkers at firms like Frog, Artefact, Teague, Argodesign, Huge, and more to find out what designers should focus on today to land the dream job of tomorrow. Of course, none of these experts can see into the future–by 2030, maybe all design jobs will be done by AI-powered robots. Still, their wealth of knowledge and experience are the closest thing we’ve got to a crystal ball. Go to college It doesn’t matter where or what you study. Just go. This might seem head-slappingly obvious–except that, for some people, it isn’t. No design leader Co.Design spoke with advocated dropping out of college. Design has always drawn on a range of subjects, from art to literature to science–and that will be true 15 years down the line. A traditional liberal arts education will not become obsolete. As for where you attend college, Dave Miller, a recruiter at Artefact, put together a short list of American schools from which he always sees standout recruits. While by no means exhaustive, it provides a good sense of the schools that are training for the design challenges of the future: University of Washington

California College of Arts

Art Center

University of Cincinnati

Carnegie Mellon University

College of Creative Studies (CCS)

Rhode Island School of Design

Western Washington University

School of Visual Arts

Parsons School of Design For most jobs, of course, it doesn’t matter where you go to school. “At the end of the day, it’s the quality of the work in your portfolio that gets you hired, not the school you go to,” Miller says. And you don’t need to study design, either. Harry West, the CEO of the global design consultancy Frog, says that the people at the top of the organization come from a variety of backgrounds. Some went to law school, others studied biology, design, and engineering. He believes that you don’t need an undergraduate design degree to be a designer. Without an undergraduate design degree, you can always build up your portfolio in a master’s program. AI is the future Get experience working with it now. Advances in artificial intelligence are changing how people interact with the world, from how we drive to how we listen to music. These are massive design challenges.

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“If I’m designing an online system, that system is not going to be static,” West says. “That system is going to be changing continually as the engine learns more about the customer. That system will be using AI and algorithms to optimize its performance. If the designer wants to play a bigger role in the design of intelligent system, he or she needs to understand how to use data, how to use AI in the creation of these systems.” The stakes are high. After all, design is part of what stands between AI that treats people with decency and AI that’s horrible and racist–just look at what happened with Microsoft’s chatbot Tay. Have two or three extra skill sets in your back pocket As technology morphs, and contemporary roles like UX designer or visual designer give way to roles like voice UX designer or AI designer, designers who have multiple skill sets will be better equipped to take on new responsibilities while remaining flexible in a team setting. There will always be a place for a designer who’s really, really good at just one thing, but it’s much better if you are also skilled in (or at least passionate about) other areas, says Eric Lawrence, creative director at Teague. And they don’t have to be exclusive to design. “Designers who combine their design expertise with formal education in business, the humanities, computer science, or biology will have an extra edge,” says Doreen Lorenzo, director of integrated design at UT Austin. “Businesses are moving fast and employers need students who can work in multidisciplinary environments with ease.” Shadow the head of business development Understanding business basics is a vital skill for designers in the future, especially as more companies start to use design as a competitive edge. “If a company can’t make money out of an idea, that idea is probably not going to happen,” says West, the CEO of Frog. “Finding a way to create something that serves a consumer or customer and makes it so clients can make money, that’s a crucial understanding for the designer to have.”

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That’s because design is becoming more and more of a strategic business discipline, according to Emilia Palaveeva, chief marketing officer at Artefact. “Designers will need to be able to work ever more closely with other teams,” she says. “So some basic understanding of business modeling, organization, and project management, even marketing, will help you be a successful part of the team.” Lawrence, creative director at Teague, advises that interns try and learn about the real-world constraints that designers face instead of only trying to build up a portfolio. He recommends that interns talk to people on the business side of the operation to get a better sense of how business decisions change the scope of projects. Take classes in (or read up on) psychology and sociology Many design leaders emphasized the need for designers to study psychology and sociology. That’s because there is a growing need for designers to think about the interactions between people and objects, especially when objects start talking back. “We’ve long studied how a person ‘uses’ an object but typically only thinking of that object as a passive object to be acted upon,” says Mark Rolston, cofounder and chief creative officer of Argodesign. “But technology is allowing us to animate objects, making them sometimes even conversant. And that creates implications that go beyond design scenarios that would traditionally be centered around concepts like ‘use’ and more into uncharted areas such as ‘talking with’ or ‘asking.'” Rolston says that even though interactions with objects like the Amazon Echo are still technically mechanical, they feel more social. Understanding psychology and sociology and how people interact will help designers create these kinds of social interactions between people and machines. “We’re not here yet,” he says. “This is still the purvey of a few scientists and engineers at the very edge of AI. Soon enough it will need to become an everyday design skill to enable these technologies to prosper and propagate.” For those who are already out of school, Rolston has a few books he recommends that are beginning to nod toward the psychological aspect of interaction design:

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“When you’re designing a bigger system, if you think that the quality of your design alone is going to win the day, you may be disappointed,” says West. “Often it’s just as much about your ability to build relationships with other people, your ability to negotiate trade-offs, so you can explain why the idea that you’re recommending supports the client’s need better.” Palaveeva, CMO at Artefact, agrees. “You would need to be able to not only come up with a brilliant design, but you need to sell it to your clients by building a compelling argument, with a rationale that is relevant to them, in a language that they understand,” she says. “Empathy should be applied not only to the design process, but the communication process as well.”