In the professional world of design, the ability to raise questions is paramount.
Designers often respond without asking first, present “solutions” to all problems without properly analysing them.
The importance of questioning for the creative process is huge. It helps you to prepare your work. You actually can save a lot of time asking the correct questions, filtering out the most valuable information.
Curiosity leads to knowledge and allows you to develop creativity!
It is essential for a designer to have a curiosity mindset.
This mindset will lead him to ask clarifying questions, actively listen to the answers and consequently become more involved and accurate.
In design, you can’t get it right without making a mistake first.
People are afraid of making mistakes, and most students don´t want to make mistakes.
If we look at it as a preparation for the active life rather than a real-life simulation, school is the ideal place for making mistakes.
Design students with experience do not ask questions, mainly because they were not used to it. And, often, have never confronted ideas in a systemized and mediated way.
It’s paradigmatic to say that sometimes the students that are “exterior” to design (without training in the area) are the ones who question the most. Especially at a master’s level because people have already taken a basic university education (whatever the area).
Disinterest is an enemy of curiosity.
Despite their lack of specific training, but having acquired maturity in other areas, these “external” students are often more captivating, because of the way they approach questions with unexpected points of view, without vices. There is sometimes a similar effect with students living outside the big cities: they are often the most “combative”, the ones who best seize the opportunities, and those who are most predisposed to absorb knowledge and experience.
Perhaps this is based on an old question: the difficulty of accessing information and opportunities, awakens the mind, while the ease of accessing it makes you sleepy. Or, as T.S. Eliot wrote in 1934: “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”.
It does not seem to matter where it comes from, but rather where you want to get to.
By London School of Design and Marketing
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