This paper proposes that there is a need to prepare undergraduate design students to be responsible practitioners when they enter the work place. The multifaceted approach adopted by the Design School at Loughborough University, to achieve this, is presented. The paper outlines and reflects on the differences between the idealistic environment that is provided within an educational setting and the actual situation in the design industry, where there is little evidence of mainstream sustainable design practice. The paper concludes that it is valuable to provide students with a range of skills which support sustainable design thinking, even if they are not at present required by the design industry, as it means that they leave university as informed individuals with the potential to lead the next generation of design practitioners.
History
School
Design
Published in
Form Akademisk
Citation
LOFTHOUSE, V.A., 2017. Preparing the way for mainstream sustainable product design – methods and approaches to inspire change. Form Akademisk - Research Journal of Design and Design Education, 10 (2), Art 2, pp. 1-19.
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/
Acceptance date
2017-04-25
Publication date
2017-09-11
Copyright date
2017
Notes
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Høgskolen i Oslo og Akershus under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/