A model of how to become a designer

Any type of learning goes through stages or levels of knowledge and abilities. So does design learning. To become a designer is, as any process of becoming a professional expert, a complex and rich process that involves everything from knowing facts to having a sense of who you are as a professional and human.

In our book, "The Design Way", we present this as a hierarchy model of design-learning outcomes. Starting with becoming able to express routine expertise, through adaptive expertise, design expertise to end with value expertise. This journey takes effort and time, learning and practice. The model (see figure below) portrays this journey. The model can be used as a way to measure where you are in your process of becoming a designer and as a "tool" to help to decide how to further develop your competence and expertise.

Below the figure, I have added an excerpt from the book about the model.

"A hierarchy is based on the understanding that the things in a lower level are given significance, meaning, and value by next the higher level. For example, for design capacity, facts and skills are valuable only in the context of the confidence to take action or to do things. The competence to learn is only valuable in designing if there is the courage to be creative and innovative, to take risks with the full understanding of responsibility and accountability which is the next higher level in the hierarchy—that of connection.

The hierarchy of learning outcomes is necessary and crucial to understand since it makes it clear that some outcomes are not possible to achieve if others at a lower level are not already achieved. It also shows that at the end of the day, to become a designer is a process that deepens over time and becomes more personal as you move up the hierarchy." (page 234)