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Equality, Equity, and Work Culture in Industrial Design Education
ACADEMIA 360°
This past year we introduced a new column to INNOVATION called Academia 360°. Our intent was and still remains to share voices in and around academia that have not been heard enough in the past. The column addressed each issue’s theme from academic stakeholders’ points of view. The intent was to unveil the holistic experience in industrial design education, turning the spotlight on the topics that are too often left in the shadows while also sharing practical and meaningful insights and the shifts brought by the pandemic in the past 1.5 years. For this Winter issue, our column, much expanded into this editorial, addresses topics of equality, equity, and work culture in industrial design education. This is also the theme of the issue.
We invited a diverse group of practitioners, educators, and students to address the following topics within the context of ID education: cultural diversity, perspectives of the BIPOC community, the needs of students, gender identity and sexual orientation, women in ID, wellness and mental health, parenthood and work-life balance, leadership, allyship and mentorship, and cross-pollination between industry and academia. Not everyone is equally comfortable talking about these topics; therefore, we left it open to the authors for how wide they wanted to cast their net.
The Culture of Industrial Design Education Why do we focus on this topic? Let’s shed some light on the academic landscape. Industrial design education provides a learning and working environment within which design students, teachers, and administrators work toward achieving their respective goals. Students take a series of classes, planned and facilitated by faculty, to acquire and apply relevant design knowledge. The setting of design classrooms differs from most other disciplines in their emphasis on experimentation and discovery through hands-on and project-based learning by doing. The learning outcomes often manifest in physical components produced to demonstrate the students’ comprehension and mastery of the design process and their overall skill development.
Most design education curricula employ a blended balance of pedagogical theories and the above-mentioned hands-on project-based making components. In the traditional sense, the instructor provides instruction, while critical thinking and design development are relayed through
practice-based methods. Complementary to this process is the one-on-one feedback that takes place between instructor and student as well as between peers, the latter being a major pillar in design education.
These interactions and learning-by-doing traditions reminiscent of the École des Beaux-Art and the Bauhaus schools are at the heart of many industrial design programs. Unfortunately, this Eurocentric approach and its eclipse of minority designers are still in the DNA of how we learn and teach industrial design. Although programs across the US are working toward change, the numbers paint a different picture, as outlined in the next sections. For many students whose first brush with design application and critique is through their professors and peers, this environment often does not reflect the realities of the existing cultural diversity in which we operate. This lack of diversity and inclusivity is one of the biggest dark spots in the anatomy of ID education.
The Consequences of the Lack of Role Models Let’s take a deeper look at who is teaching industrial design. But first, answer this question for us: Practitioners and educators, who were your teachers when you were going through college? Dear students, who are your current faculty?
When we asked ourselves this question, we had different experiences to share. Verena’s educational environment was clearly white-male dominated, in both Germany and the US. Aziza’s experience was more mixed, having finished graduate school more recently. The face of industrial design is changing, albeit slowly. More importantly, in academia and practice we have begun to talk about the need to recognize the mixed cultures, stories, experiences, and personal connections represented in the ID profession.
The slowness of action becomes clear when taking a deeper look at the academic world where the typical industrial design educator is still predominantly a white male. People of color, women, gender fluid people, people with varying abilities, and members of the LGBTQA+ community are still in the minority. In order to bring clarity to our assumptions and with the help of one of our students, Annaka Ketterer (Iowa State, ID class of 2022), we investigated the composition of the faculty and leadership at all ID programs affiliated with IDSA. This is what we discovered:
Out of 68 programs (approximately 5% follow an interdisciplinary approach and the rest being fully ID focused), the male-female ratio is about 2:1. Due to a lack of publicly accessible data, information on gender fluidity, LGBTQA+ identity, and people with varying abilities was not available. In leadership positions, such as chairs or program directors, there are three males to every female (again, this calculation does not account for any of the above differentiations). Among the female leaders, we found two Asian, two Black, and eight white chairs or program directors. As for male chairs and program directors, we found one who is a Black person, six of Asian descent, and 33 white people.
Please note, this research is based on what we found on departmental websites and is subject to error. However, it paints a clear picture that we are far away from where the faculty and leadership representations need to be to provide students with the role models they seek and need and faculty with the diverse set of peers and leaders necessary for equality.
In Aziza’s experience, she had never met a Black female ID faculty in the US until she met Raja Schaar, IDSA, the program director at Drexel University’s Product Design program and co-chair of IDSA’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council (DEIC). In fact, it is not unheard of for students to go through their entire undergraduate and graduate education without having had a woman, person of color, or non-cis gender-identifying person serving as their main instructor, a topic the IDSA Student Chapter from UIC is addressing in their article.
In another example, a group of female graduating senior students at Verena’s program shared in our first Academia 360° column that Verena was the first female instructor they had had in their entire program of study in the ID department. The few female faculty in ID education face major gender-related obstacles. In a recent example, Louise Manfredi, IDSA, an assistant professor of industrial design at Syracuse University, is currently taking an unpaid leave of absence to care for her daughter because of the dearth of accessible childcare in her area, which was amplified by COVID repercussions. Speaking to some of these topics, in
her article, Betsy Barnhart, IDSA, the ID program director at the University of Kansas and a member of the IDSA DEIC, elaborates on the work-life balance as a woman, mother, designer, and educator in a leadership position both before and during the pandemic.
The 2020 McKinsey report “Women in the Workplace” reported that senior-level women in professional practice were much more likely to practice allyship and apprenticeship for employees within minority groups than senior-level men. We asked ourselves, why is there still a gender gap within senior-level roles? For one, research shows that women are less likely to apply for jobs they are not 100% qualified for, while their male counterparts have no problem doing so, a topic Caroline Criado Perez covers in her book Invisible Women. Additionally, archaic work structures built on homogeneity provide little support, such as for working mothers, and the shortfall of role models within the system are barriers to success. This is true for BIPOC and LGBTQA+ professionals, women, and people with varying abilities. In the academic setting, the scrutiny on minority faculty can be observed in students’ teacher evaluations exemplified by benschmidt.org/profGender, a website by Ben Schmidt, a clinical associate professor of history at New York University, which shows bias woven in the choice of words used to evaluate male versus female faculty.
In the Winter 2020 issue, Jacinda Walker (“How Designers Can Impact Diversity in Design”) warned us about oversimplifying the lack of diversity in design education as a pipeline issue. It is easy to see how doing so perpetuates inaction akin to the chicken-and-egg debate. This lack of diversity is particularly disadvantageous for minority students, who are not only working hard to overcome barriers set by systemic disparities but also lack relatable mentorship.
What does the lack of representation mean for the few faculty who belong to minority groups? Certainly, the burden of being one of a few and most of the time the only person from a minority group comes with multifaceted pressures ranging from institutional to personal. As singular entities, many minority faculty and students have to override their identities to fit into the status quo. For example, the historical debate over professional hairstyles in work environments for Black professionals is widespread, while speaking with an accent can create tension for most non-native English speakers—something we both can relate to from our fair share of not always positive experiences. Minority faculty often have to overcome higher barriers to not only achieve tenure and promotion but also get funding and fulfill research responsibilities. In her article, Carolina Gill, IDSA, a professor of industrial design at NC State University and co-director of the Health Centered Design Lab, discusses the dynamics of women and minorities in ID education.
Beyond Neutrality There is a common understanding that if everyone is treated equally, then the system is fair all around. We would like to dispute this reasoning because we believe that neutrality favors those who are already privileged. Recognizing diversity and inclusion needs to go hand in hand with recognizing differences and the needs of different people.
Without a doubt, we need faculty that come from all walks of life and all corners of the world with differing thoughts, interests, abilities, and pursuits to prepare students for today’s and tomorrow’s workplaces. Authentic diversity and inclusivity will make industrial design education scalable, accessible, worldly, and holistic. This is not only true for the classroom and subsequently for the work put into the world by these rising industrial designers but also equally important for a fair and just work environment that allows everyone within to thrive.
From this year’s Academia 360° articles and our personal experiences, we are well aware of the many systemic pressures of minorities working in industrial design academic institutions, and yet what we touched upon in this introduction only scratches the surface. There are many more issues that we are both not in a position to talk about extensively out of respect for those who live through those experiences every day. It is for this reason that we are using this space to give a voice to those among us who are part of the solution to remove the dark spots and, on an equally important note, to share accessibility insights brought by the pandemic in these past 18 months.
We invite you to join us on this tour of the current state of industrial design education and culture through the lens of diverse voices that highlight imminent issues in today’s environment and provide us with meaningful, actionable visions as we look to the future.
—Aziza Cyamani, IDSA, and Verena Paepcke-Hjeltness, IDSA acyamani2@unl.edu; verena@iastate.edu aziza@ksu.edu
Aziza Cyamani, IDSA, is an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
Verena Paepcke-Hjeltness, IDSA, is an assistant professor of Industrial Design at Iowa State University and the Education Director on the IDSA Board of Directors.
ACTION ITEMS
The first step of healing is to recognize there is a problem. By dedicating this editorial to this discussion, we hope to make these topics commonplace and encourage people to talk about them without inhibition. What can you do? Here is a list (by no means exhaustive) to give you some ideas of where to begin.
Recognize biases and assumptions and seek to eliminate them. Accept that while growing up, we might have picked up assumptions, dogmas, and stigmas, and that it is up to us to recognize and eliminate these unconscious biases. Try to look at facts before forming an opinion; most likely there are pieces of the puzzle that are not obvious. This rings true for so many situations: “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
Create safe spaces. Somehow, diversity and inclusion are still trigger points for certain institutions. Many people within minority groups are afraid to speak up about these topics because they worry they would lose their job. Create a safe space for uncomfortable discussions and embrace productive tension.
Practice allyship and recognize people’s contributions equally. Support peers by truly listening to their ideas and thoughts and following through. Use approaches in your responses that encourage listening and sharing, such as “Yes, and…” instead of “But…” When you see injustice or discrimination occurring, or when credit is not given or given to the wrong person, please speak up or take action. Advocate for change, call out the bullies, and encourage everyone to share their thoughts.
Fairly distribute assignments. Distribute non-formal work evenly. Work that does not count toward scholarship, promotion, or tenure should be evenly distributed among peers regardless of identity or gender. This is true for both academic and professional environments. Create a flexible work structure. If the past year has taught us anything, it is that work can be done in many ways. Embrace the flexibility created by remote, hybrid, flipped, and in-person modalities. This also bleeds into tools that facilitate accessibility for a wide range of users..
Engage in mentorship, exchanging knowledge, experiences, and expertise. If you can, take up the role of professionally mentoring a colleague, a rising designer, or a student. You might realize that the benefits serve you both equally.
Keep learning and become involved. If you are a faculty member at a university or an employee at a company, revisit your institution’s unconscious bias, harassment, and discrimination training programs and take the extra step to apply and engage your learnings with your peers and students. Don’t know what is appropriate? Ask! You can also join organizations and initiatives that support diversity and inclusion or start your own initiatives. Find more resources at:
• IDSA’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council: www.idsa.org/DEI • IDSA’s Women in Design chapters and initiatives: www.idsa.org/women-design-chapters • Design Allyship: www.designallyship.com • Diversity in Design: www.diversityindesignpdx.org/resources
