Design futures - future designers

The tasks designers will face in the near-to-medium term future will undoubtedly be ever more demanding and complex. The convergence of computing and communications technologies will enable designers to collaborate and share tasks in design and development without ever having to meet physically. Moreover, recent social, cultural and economic shifts throughout the world will demand designers to be ever more flexible in the work that they are asked to undertake. Future designers will, thus, need to be sensitive to the demands from many specific sectors of the global marketplace, be able to exploit fully developing technologies as they evolve, yet be increasingly speculative in synthesising their solutions whilst challenging conventional wisdom. This paper describes a new Interdisciplinary Design programme that aims to provide students with the necessary skills to achieve success in the design world of the future.