Digital Work Practices: Affordances in Design Education

Abstract

AbstractThis article draws from a multi‐disciplinary, multi‐institutional research project on digital work practices and graduate work readiness. Utilising the concept of technology affordances, we focus on the potential for domain‐specific learning experiences within design education. For the purpose of this project, we have articulated digital capabilities in design by adapting affordance categories in terms of three levels of complexity for scaffolded learning: functional, perceptual and adaptive. In order to further develop the relationship between technology affordances and design education, we analyse data from an industry roundtable in relation to our developed digital capability descriptor. The findings suggest that employers need designers with highly adaptive capabilities to work in increasingly complex interdisciplinary work environments. We also found that the role of designers has changed significantly in recent years that require higher educational institutions to involve industry when developing curricula.