The Y-Shaped Designer—Connective Competences as Key to Collaboration across Disciplines

Abstract

This paper reports on the re-development of our MA curriculum in design. Main objective of this development is a more practice- and project-based MA Curriculum that delivers connective competences for the collaboration across disciplines, rather than specializing in a specific design domain. For design education, we therefore propose a re-visited model of T-shaped skills by proposing the Y-shaped Designer, who acts in collaborations across disciplines thanks to a disciplinary root, a clearly perceived role and the ability to generate multimodal design outputs. The paper’s discussion is based on a study of the current shift in the Swiss Creative Economy, an alumni survey, a literature review focusing undisciplinarity and a series of expert-workshops, that led to the identification of the required skills our graduates need to successfully connect with a globalizing creative economy. First results are a re-definition of the competences and learning goals targeted in the new curriculum, as well as a set of didactical approaches extending the curriculum to what is meant to become a real-world lab for MA students in design.