Potts, R., 2017.

Design education at the Boundary

This short paper gathers insight about learning environments in design and leadership in the creative industries. The production of expertise is often highly specialised and domain specific, however this study observes a learning situation that places emphasis on collaborative interaction and group dynamics nested within dense creative networks. Design learning demands complex problem solving and decision making in response to contingent situations. These environments defy brevity of explanation, yet are microcosms of radical transformations in the digital economy. The reciprocal relationship between learning environments and industry are explored. Embedding in a network of learners and experts, using ethnographic methods blend situated insight with theoretical oversight. An ethnographic investigation of a learning organisation is applied to generate insight that reveals a dense network of collaborative practices, the production of experts and complex reciprocal relationships between learning and professional practice. Intense and inevitably participatory ethnographic engagements are indicative the processes of transformative change and challenge our understanding of the nature of learning. The role of innovation and flux in societal structures is reflected in these radically different approaches to learning. The image that appears is highly counterintuitive but prescient, providing foundations of new approaches to design education at the boundary. Learning environments that are responsive to a world that is rapidly moving beyond a stable state.